Wednesday, November 9, 2011

5 hours in the Men's Room (and a hour for lunch)

You know, most people don't understand how much work and how much one needs to be a "jack of all trades" at a small museum.  Especially if the museum doesn't have a lot of funding. 

Today I helped Larry and Jerry work on the men's room.  The walls still looked horrible and needed attending after the water pipe busted several months ago.  In order to save money, we're doing the work ourselves.  Some WyoTech volunteers scrapped most of the loose stuff off over the weekend, so Larry worked on patching up the holes, I was a great cleaner-upper today.  ;-)  And I was an excellent scrapper holder.  But I also learned about how to fix cracking, damaged plaster walls.  I also masked off all the areas that are not going to get the texture when Larry sprays either tonight or tomorrow morning (I'll be dressed for dirty work tomorrow as well).  We used at least a couple hundred square feet of plastic in that bathroom today covering the smooth lower portion of the walls, the doors, the stalls, the windows.... 

It may not seem like a lot, but it made me think that I'm sure the Met does not have their president doing repair and maintenance work.  It's important for someone going into the museum studies field to understand the different jobs that make the museum work.  From the janitor to the director.  And it's also important for one to understand that depending on what museum one works at, it is good to be very well rounded and hands on, because the water line might break and the plaster walls of the historic building might need fixing.  :-)

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