BUBBLE WRAP BONANZA
Homeowners prepping for renos can learn from museum’s remodel DONNA BRYSON
Anyone who has lived through a major home remodelling project can sympathize with Laura Elliff Cruz, collections manager for the Denver Art Museum who is in charge of relocating or trying to protect tens of thousands of treasures during a building upgrade expected to take a year.
Art handlers have been bubble-wrapping, taping and binning paintings, furniture, ceramics, modern sculpture and other pieces since April, with a Dec. 31 deadline for virtually emptying the sevenstorey, 210,000-squarefoot (19,510-squaremetre) North Building. Some pieces, like a totem pole from the Native American collection, can’t be moved, so Elliff Cruz is working on a plan involving foam and plywood to protect it. Her usual team of four or five people has been increased to 40.
Most of us don’t have 50,000 precious objects, many of them fragile, old, heavy or some combination of the above. But DAM’s experience offers some guidance on keeping valuables safe while contractors are turning a house into a job site.
PLANNING
“Oh my God. An art museum? Are you kidding me?” said architect Rebecca Duoos-Bourgazas, who knows a thing or two about big projects — she has helped engineers keep the lights on while overseeing power plant renovations. Duoos-Bourgazas renovated her own home a decade ago, and says the logistics of looking after belongings and living as normally as possible are often something “that’s overlooked when you do a remodel. People don’t understand the impact it’s going to have on them.”
Christoph Heinrich, who directs the DAM, said the first step was careful planning.
Some storage is available under a nearby building recently erected for the museum’s administrative staff. DAM leased two other spaces with a combined 25,000 square feet (2,323 square metres) — think pods on a grand scale.
A homeowner might keep special heirlooms safe by moving them to a relative’s place. In DAM’s case, nearly 50 paintings on loan from the museum’s Western art collection are sitting out the renovation as part of an exhibit at History Colorado Center, the flagship of the state archives, which is pairing them with artifacts like letters, photographs and a chuckwagon. DAM also has its Frederic C. Hamilton Building by architect Daniel Libeskind, which will remain open during the North’s renovation.
GROUPING AND LABELLING
Nan Travers is an administrator at SUNY Empire State College and also a fibre artist. Though her archives aren’t as vast as DAM’s, when she and her husband decided to renovate their Middle Grove, N.Y., home, she moved dyeing and felt-making supplies.
“Any dust that got in it would ruin the fibre,” Travers said.
She boxed the art supplies as well as clothes, cooking utensils and other items. She numbered each box and kept an inventory so she would know where to look if she had to pull items out of storage.
MOVE OUT WHAT YOU CAN
The Traverses’ builder, Kevin Girvin, urges clients to move themselves and their belongings out if possible.
It’s not just the dust. Vibrations from heavy equipment and banging can have the impact of a small earthquake.
“Anything expensive hanging on the wall, remove it,” Girvin said.
In Wilmington, N.C., Jill Tremlett Large saved money by staying in her home with her four-year-old son during a two-stage renovation. Her builders set up a makeshift kitchen in the living room, even plumbing a sink there.
“I didn’t have to wash dishes in the bathtub. That would have been a deal-breaker,” she said. “It was an adventure.”