.png)
Moving Museums
Preparations
The Building has been bought!!!
Now the planning stage begins... Making a floor plan with donation areas. These would represent to the public the size of area that would show them how far their donations would go in square feet.
​
While doing that we were still working on inventory of the artifacts both physical and library, getting them all into searchable spreads sheets with better descriptions and photographs to match.
​
Our newsletter comes out quarterly with updates, and several small fund raisers. Pioneer Festival being prepared and worked on getting ready to go.Then November 2016 arrived it had been a unusual year Diana Shaner broke her leg, the first to receive bodily injury in the museum, and Cathy Haney the Curator and life line of the museum passed away.
​
With Jeff Gaiser taking over the reins, everyone was still calm and thinking about the move during the summer. When Jeff was approached by the County Commissioners who has been approached by the hospital administrator if the museum could speed up their move a few months to help the renovation at the hospital move along.
Moving
The County Commissioners started with we will help you move, they where willing to even pay for the move if we could be out by the middle of February. So the boxed were bought and started to be built and filled. Volunteers came in and built and filled even more boxes. Then more volunteers came, AmeriCorps arrived to help finish the move.AmeriCorps and the moving company came the same day, five days later the moving crew was behind by a day.
Now that EVERYTHING was in the new location and almost everything was still in a box some where.
​
Working on the interior of the present museum was started in 2012 after the purchase. There was small things that had to fixed to keep the building from deteriorating and that was soon taken care of.
​
The board had also been keeping an eye on the cabins in heritage Village and they were in need of repair immediately so the decision was made to see if a renovation of the two family cabins that was donated to the museum could still be used as a learning part of Clay County. After careful planning and taking out a few wall the two cabins became one with an easy to see inside the old cabin.
​
There was small issues along the way but the major crunch came in November 2016. The planned rooms where framed and sheet rock was up. The heating and cooling system was installed. When the opportunity to move help came along, we took it!
​
A board member had came in the fall and asked if we could use some help that was free, we were intrigued! By, November it was set for the AmeriCorps team to come in. On January 9th they were here and went to work. The first week was spent in helping us move . The following week is when things got really started happening. The showroom floor was cleared of walls, walls were put around the heating system. The meeting room and front room was also painted and ready to hold temporary storage.
With some the painting done and one office moved into, the break area painted and almost ready to use. The upstairs in the original two story building was stripped to the outside walls, another wall taken out and two new walls set in. These walls go next to the concrete beams. When the new plumbing was finished the old plumbing was pulled out and the original passenger elevator has been exposed, as well as the upstairs bathroom. The warehouse upstairs had all divider walls taken down, shelving set up for permanent storage.