Team Hancock has been busy helping in the community. Hancock Lumber recently partnered with Sebago Lakes Region Fuller Center for Housing to help a Windham couple struggling with home confinement due to complications of advanced ALS. Homeowner John Gregoire is completely physically disabled and lives 24/7 in a wheelchair.
His wife, Linda, is his full-time caretaker. Getting outside is a lengthy and painful process, involving multiple maneuvers and a wheelchair lift in the garage. Because it is so difficult for him to be moved, John does not leave the house at all except for necessary appointments. Even worse, the house does not have a second exit that he can access, leaving him in grave danger in the event of a fire or other emergency.
The project has been fully funded and the plan is to build an attached covered porch and wheelchair lift so that John can safely and easily get outside and go to appointments or enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.
Additionally, a second exit from the home will be built so that, in the event of a fire, John could be quickly removed from the house.
Construction is already underway and the bulk of the project was completed on July 29th when bicycle riders completed their trek from Oregon to Maine and help volunteer at the site. A huge thanks goes to Hancock Lumber’s Windham team for their coordination and financial support to make this project happen.
A main sponsor of the event for several years, Team Hancock in Bethel partnered with the Bethel Area Chamber for the 24th Annual Harvest Festival.
The sawmill hosted a group of 20 community members to tour them around the facility. This allowed them to learn more about the journey from log to board. Members from Hancock Lumber in Bethel also hosted a booth at the Town Common to paint pumpkins with kids.
Team Hancock in Windham is also helping provide rough Hancock Pine to Preservation Timber Frames for the restoration of the barn at the Desert of Maine.
Located in Freeport, the Desert of Maine is hoping to use the barn for a performing arts center. The barn is the last remaining piece of the original Tuttle Farm, so preserving this important piece of Maine history is key.
The current barn is being disassembled and every board that is salvageable will be kept to rebuild the structure. Approximately 70% of the original timbers from the 1700s and 1800s are able to be reused for the project.
Preservation Timber Frames will use the same techniques and tools that would have been used in the original construction of the barn as they put it back together. They aim to be complete in the late fall or early winter.
WGME reported on the project where the owner commented, “All of these historic structures across Maine are lost every year. So we just wanted to save it and when we’re done, this barn will stand for another 200 years. It will host all sorts of musical performances, family gatherings, it will just be filled with life for the next 200 years.”
The desert is currently 20 acres of rolling sand dunes in the middle of the forest. Former owners never rotated their crops, so the overworked and overgrazed pastures exposed silt from a lake that once stood in the spot. The lake was formed by the melting of the two-mile-thick Laurentide Ice Sheet that once covered New England.