Projects

We were fortunate to acquire a new building for our Santa's Elves Workshop (a.k.a. Elf Central)  in October of 2022; however, a few months later in March of 2023, the snow was too much to bear and the building roof collapsed. The damage was catastrophic as the whole center of the building was caved in where the main room and kitchen area are. Despite this, we were lucky enough to salvage the roof and shore it up. This in itself was a huge undertaking as the interior and floor needed to be substantially repaired and reinforced prior to bracing. The hard work paid off though as we were able to at least get what was left of the roof up and somewhat in-place until mother nature eased up. This bought us some time until the weather was more cooperative. 

Once we caught a break, work began by clearing out the debris, continuing to repair and reinforce the structure, and acquire materials for repairs. This was several months in the making as many of us are in our late 60's or older, so it is a challenge working through everything as a safe pace. Regardless, with a bit of determination, hard work, and much appreciated help from the local community and our donors, we were able to purchase new trusses, and roofing materials to begin the rebuilding process. Over the course of 2024, we have been steadily working of rebuilding the roof by removing the destroyed rounded roof and replacing it with a typical pitched roof (so this doesn't happen again) with metal sheeting. 

As you can see from the pictures below, we have come a long way from catastrophe to a new roof that is nearly complete. At the time of this writing, the finishing touches on the building facia are going up, so the workshop will once again be enclosed away from the elements and prepared for this winter. 

While this is a major milestone, there is still a lot of work to do in the interior to complete the recovery process. There is a lot of drywall, fixtures, flooring, plumbing,  and electrical work that still must be done to make this a useable venue for our elves. At this stage though, we are already upon our 2024 preparations to gather up toys for the children and are hard at work to support all of Santa's holiday cheer! Our goal is to dive right in again in 2025 to continue repairs in hopes that we may get our own Christmas wish and be able to move into our new home come soon.