Rich Reinke and Linda Zwicker, still smiling!
Okay we are back up and running here at the HLATC. Hooray! I will get right to sharing the fun photos of our move days with you. First up, the moving of the rolled textiles.
The oversized rolls, covered in tyvek, were removed from their wooden racks and were carefully secured on the moving truck individually. Thankfully, this did not represent the majority of our rolled textiles. Most were able to be moved in groups within their storage racks. The tubes were secured onto the racks (as you've seen illustrated in earlier posts) and the full racks were inserted into custom made, covered moving carts, which were then secured on the truck.
Those carts were then moved over to our new space and the emptied into the custom built temporary racking system while waiting for the cabinets to be brought over.
Bringing the cabinets over is where things got interesting. We're not sure how the cabinets made it into our tiny storage space many years ago, but it was fairly evident that they weren't coming out through the usual door we use to access the space. The door into our storage area had a tight turn to get out and there was no chance the cabinets were going to be able to make that turn.
So once the room was entirely emptied of textiles, we came to what we'd been excitedly planning for: the day we knock the wall down. In reality, it ended up being the day the UW Physical Plant staff cuts out the door frame, which wasn't quite as exciting and dramatic, but much cleaner and less disruptive.
Our storage space had in fact been three separate rooms at some point in the building's past and those additional doorways remained in the hallways. Once the space became HLATC textile storage, those doors directly into the hallway were locked and blocked off by cabinets. It turns out, we just needed to widen one of those doorways just a little bit and the oversized cabinets could make it through.
And down the stairs it goes!
Once our metal cabinets were also carefully maneuvered out of the building and installed at the new storage space, the regular rolled textile racks were then taken out of the temporary shelving and placed back in their metal cabinets.
