The week before Christmas is never the ideal time for an acquisitions trip, but when there is an opportunity to bring home some nice pine bleachers, we pack our bags. With the students gone for the week, we were invited to Ohio State University’s Newark campus to salvage what we could of their old bleachers. Their new recreation/wellness center, Adena Hall, is in the midst of a complete renovation. Shared with Central Ohio Technical College, the updated building will be seeking LEED Certification.

Lucky for us, a graduation ceremony had been held the day before so the bleacher assembly was all pulled out and we were able to get right to work. And work it was. In 10 hours we removed more than 5,000 nuts from 5,000 carriage bolts and had freed nearly all the boards. This required plenty of awkward repetitive positioning, as we struggled to access spaces with only inches of clearance. That night we compensated ourselves with a feast of beer and barbeque at City Barbeque, which also happens to be a favorite client of ours.

Our other compensation was the collection of odds and ends that we found lost beneath the bleachers. A motley collection of souvenirs it was.

The next morning, after loading the material on to our flatbed, but before departing Newark, we swung by the old site of the Wehrle Stove Factory where two of us present had spent several weeks in 2010 processing and loading over 120,000 board feet of timber onto trucks bound for our shop in Farmington, NY. These timbers included a variety of wood that ranged from pine to oak to chestnut. (Only 3,500 board feet of this material remains in our inventory to date.) The site looks pretty much as we left it: barren. Hopefully future development is on the horizon.

As for the bleachers, we look forward to seeing what creative ways they will get used. We’ve now added 1,500 linear feet to our growing inventory. They’re ready and available for your next project! Game on!