Men’s Shed completes six-year renovation

The community established to encourage men to socialise and get creative has expanded its workshop and showed it off to the public.

‘It’s an old shed but we’ve renovated it the best we can and it’s taken us six years as the other shed had holes in the roof, rotten roof timbers and it was knee-deep in detritus,’ said Men’s Shed chairman Derrick Thatcher.

‘The guys have done an amazing job as none of us are really builders, we just had a go to see how we got on.’

More than 40 tonnes of rubbish was removed from the former shed in the space of eight months, and the space now contains a variety of machinery for members to use and build whatever they desire.

The Men’s Shed has about 50 regular members and more than 100 who come and go.

‘We’ve been focusing on renovating the building and we’ve just about completed it on the inside and the outside still needs a bit of rendering and cladding,’ said Mr Thatcher.

‘Once that’s done we can focus on what we want to do rather than what we need to do.

‘We intend to get some more modern lathes, but we try to buy tools that you wouldn’t normally have in your garage at home, because of cost and space.’

The open day ran from 10am to 4pm and about 100 people attended just in the morning.

Mr Thatcher said that it was gratifying to see that response from islanders because they had worked very hard on the renovation.

The Men’s Shed is only open during the day and on weekends, which narrows the type of people who can attend, typically those who are retired or unemployed.

The group hopes to open in the evenings but it depends on the membership and getting volunteers to open it up in the evening for people who work.

Any man over the age of 18 can join and work on whatever projects they like using the space and tools.