Renovations near completion for new-look Stavely museum

REVAMPED LOOK MEANT A VIRTUAL START FROM SCRATCH

Stavely and District Museum officials will be able to celebrate the museum’s grand reopening in June.

The museum has been undergoing renovations for the last two years and has been closed. That work is nearing completion. It’s hoped the public grand re-opening of the museum will happen at an unconfirmed date in June.

Museum board member Janice Binmore says the entire building has been gutted. Everything from removing walls, adding new flooring, and painting has been done. The interior was also somewhat redesigned. They are in process of putting the displays back together.

“We had to go from basically an empty shell and then there’s a new roof (that’s) been added on,” adds Binmore.

Currently, Binmore says they’ve got all the help they need for finishing up the renovations and putting all of the displays back together.

Binmore says one of the directors of the board is also entering all of the museum items into a computer database system, so people can search for specific items. There will now be rotating displays with artifacts in the museum.

Binmore says the outer shell of the building is set up as different themed rooms. Examples of this include a banking room, a military room, a parent’s bedroom, a child’s bedroom and an old bathroom.

She explains the themes of these rooms will stay the same, but they will change the artifacts once in a while to keep things updated and new. The middle part of the building will have rotating displays that are changed every couple of months, so the artifacts are different.

“This is our aim — that it’s a museum that (shows) history grows and changes,” adds Binmore.

All of the artifacts in the museum were stored in a side building so the entire museum could be emptied for the renovations. Items in the museum range from the 1800s to the 1960s.

Binmore says people are bringing in items from the Stavely area to donate.

The museum opened in 1989 and no renovations have been done since that time, so the board felt it was time to refurbish the building. The roof needed to be replaced, but it was decided to simultaneously redo the entire building.

While a total cost for the project wasn’t provided, funding was received from various groups, organizations and levels of government. A good portion of the funding came from government grants. The community of Stavely has also made financial contributions.

Several not-for-profit groups in Stavely donated some funding such as the Elks, Royal Purple and the Oddfellows.

“Without the town support, we wouldn’t be able to get this far,” adds Binmore.

Having been a part of the renovations, Binmore has come across some amazing artifacts. One in particular she just came across was a piece of clothing from the early 1900s and along with it was a photograph of the child in the outfit.