Get household items fixed at the Repair Cafe

Everyone is welcome to come to the Convent Glen Orleans Wood Environment Committee’s Repair Cafe at the Orleans United Church on September 19th from 2PM to 5PM. We will have a variety of fixers from our wonderful community who will be happy to repair many of your household items, all for free. 

If you have worn or torn clothing or other textiles, we will have three women sewing at the event; Denise Jean, Maria Fleming and Fran Misner. If a zipper needs to be replaced, please bring along the replacement zipper. One of the sewists, Denise Jean, can service vintage sewing machines such as Singer, Kenmore and White, and can demo basic sewing machine maintenance. She can also help troubleshoot tension issues if you bring in your machine and your manual. Denise will be happy to accept donations of sewing machines that she can then service and donate back to our community.

We will also have a team of general repairers who will be on hand to repair small household appliances, lamps, wooden items and other electrical and mechanical household items and toys. With us this again this year are John Looper, Stephen Delahunt, Raman Chauhan, Zolton Petho, and Charles Guerin. Please bring along any batteries, bulbs or other parts that you know need replacing, along with operating manuals if you have them.

Jason Yin will be there again this year to sharpen your knives. Jason is also able to replace your guitar strings and do other minor adjustments to your guitar. 

This year we are very fortunate to have Nancy and Paul Begin back with us from the Community Computer Refurbishing Program. Since 2016, CCRP has refurbished and provided more than 1,700 computers, free of charge, to families, students, newcomers, entrepreneurs and others who need access to technology. Nancy and Paul will be happy to help with repairs to your laptops. Additionally, you can directly support their program with donations of laptops with Windows 8 or newer operating systems. CCRP will securely wipe all hard drives so that personal data is unrecoverable. Donated computers are carefully refurbished, with used parts salvaged whenever possible.

Last but not least we are very fortunate to have two bike mechanics who will be outside to work on your bikes; Alexis Dube and John Gibson. If you know what replacement parts you will need, please bring them along. John Gibson has been volunteering with re-Cycles Used Bicycle Shop for 10 years and is a member of their Board of Directors. Re-Cycles loves donations of used bikes, which can be brought to 445 Catherine Street. John also runs the Hop on Bikes program with the Ottawa Community Housing Foundation. The Hop on Bikes program supplies 300+ bikes a year to children in community housing. 

Finally, there will be free coffee, tea and treats for all, provided by the Convent Glen Metro and baked by Committee members and Mary’s Bakery.

We are so fortunate to have so many talented people in our community. We hope to see you there, and hope you’ll participate in repairing everyday items that can then stay out of our landfill!