As mentioned above, the second project completed over the holidays was the refurbishment of the club’s mat area and a general clean-up. This was a slow and tedious process involving 5 Budokanis and completed over 3 days. This involved:
- Resecuring all the bolts and nuts fixing the aluminium frame to the timber base around the mat perimeter
- Manually re-aligning all the mats and closing all gaps between the mats
- Using car jacks along two sides of the mat to compress the aluminium frame whilst securing 20 1m long angle iron beams with dynabolts into the concrete around the 4 sides of the frame perimeter. This means that the old timber brackets along the south wall of the mat area and all the belt fillers are no longer needed.
- Carpet tiling all the concrete area around the mat area.
- Wiping down all the ceiling fans and overhead roof trusses, and vacuuming all walls and floors
We didn’t want a large group for the mat refurbishment but in hindsight probably should have sourced a few more volunteers for the clean-up. That said, it all worked out in the end. The club is very grateful to the 5 who struggled with the heat and dusty conditions: Andras Koltai, Michael Shahmatov and Kerrye, Josh and Rob Katz.