Firms on Firms & Racks on Racks: Volunteer Day 2012

This past Friday the Grip/Faust/R29 trifecta got together for the 3rd Annual Volunteer Day! This year the activities took place at the Rebuilding Exchange in downtown Chicago. This fantastic non-for-profit salvages building materials from landfills and makes them accessible for reuse through their retail warehouse. They also provide education and job training, spreading their message of sustainable deconstruction practices and reuse.  To learn more about this great organization, check out their website or visit them on Facebook. If you are wanting to visit them, their new space opens to the public early November.

Our day started with a tour from our amazing tour guide and liaison for the day, Heather White. She showed us around and got us started on the business of moving them to their new home down the street.

First Things First
Our first job for the day was to deconstruct racks…which happened to be quite a fun time.

Dawn and Tim: Teamwork makes the dream work!

The two Bobs on a rack

Justin and Kevin doing some heavy lifting.

After we took down the racks, we went over to the new space and divided up to conquer a variety of projects.

Cleaning, cleaning, and a little more cleaning
Making sure floors are spick and span

Safety first!

Kelly and Dawn workin’ hard.

Camay and Susan making sure the dusty floors get clean.

While they were sweeping…
There were several smaller jobs that had to be done in the new warehouse…

Bob helping pull down drywall in the new break room.

Ben, Tim, Josh, and Dave also stripped hardware and nails/screws out of pieces of wood.