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THE OLD BOILER house in Dublin’s Ballymun was a hotbed of activity when Ruth O’Connor visited one recent Saturday afternoon for their Repair Cafe.
At the Rediscovery Centre in Dublin’s Ballymun you’ll find a cafe selling delicious and affordable treats and a well-stocked eco shop selling everything from D9 honey by the Dublin Honey Project to handmade Steampunk mug holders. You’ll even find recycled paint which is collected from recycling depots and available in a myriad of colours at a fraction of the cost of brand new paint – perfect for pockets and the environment.
As the National Centre for the Circular Economy, the Rediscovery Centre also hosts and facilitates a wide range of workshops for people of all ages on topics that include everything from hand stitching and clothing repair to furniture revamping.
From 10am on the morning of the Repair Cafe one recent Saturday, kids and their parents had been lining up, not to buy the centre’s refurbished bikes, but to have their own bikes repaired at minimal cost.
“We strip off everything and we fix, clean and replace the parts if we have to. Then we build the bike back up again,” says Steven Boardman, one of the bike mechanics at the centre. “I’d safely say that a lot of the refurbished bikes we sell are in better condition than new bikes I’ve seen. I’m afraid I don’t have much to say about some of the big stores that sell bikes – they’re basically department stores. If you’re buying a new bike you need to be buying it from an actual bike shop.”
The most common issues that people have with their bikes are with the gears, brakes, lights and tyres. “These are parts that require lifetime maintenance. A lot of issues are due to neglect and lack of maintenance,” says Steven. At the Repair Cafe, an important aspect of the bike mechanics’ role is to educate people about the need to maintain their bikes – on the day I visited a large proportion of time had been spent advising bike owners on maintenance and repair.
A former chef, Steven got into the repair business during the pandemic, and says that he wants to encourage people to repair and maintain their own bikes themselves. “It’s usually quite a simple fix – you just need to know how to do it. People are often surprised that just a small tweak might be required to fix the problem. We are about teaching people how to do things themselves.”
Also at the Repair Cafe, Joanne Fetherston and Jay Cloak of the Dublin Polishers were on hand to help members of the public with furniture repairs and to give them some ideas on how to upcycle their furniture at home.
The most common items brought in for repair to the Rediscovery Centre tend to be chairs, but on the day I visited, a woman had brought in an ‘apprentice piece’ – a small table bought in Navan some 30 years ago.
“An apprentice cabinet maker would have made it years ago – it’s a scaled down version of a full sized table,” Jay explains. “The table was full of glue and paint so we helped to remove the marks. We also repaired a chair and helped to repair a 1940s step stool – the owner was thinking of painting it but we encouraged her not to paint over the patina of age,” says Jo.
“One of my favourite Repair Cafe moments was when a woman brought in a child’s chair that her father-in-law had made. When she was reupholstering it she found some tiny toys and hair slides down the sides from the children who had sat on the chair and lost bits and pieces over the years. She put them in a little bag with a photograph of her father-in-law. In another 50 years when someone goes to reupholster it again they’ll find those items again. It’s a lovely thought.”
At the Repair Cafe if someone brings in an issue that can be easily fixed within a short period of time Jo and Jay will do that, however they are also, like Steven, really keen to teach people how it was done so that the individual can perhaps do a similar repair again another time.
“I’ll explain to the person how I did the job and what products to buy in case they have other pieces at home with a similar problem,” says Jay. “Sometimes, by showing people, it’s a lot easier for them to understand how to do the thing. A lot of people are visual learners and when we break down things for them into bite size pieces they are often surprised that they can do the thing themselves – it just clicks.”
It’s not always antiques that the Dublin Polishers are tasked with: “Sometimes people bring in modern chairs to us,” says Jo. “I had two ladies come in with chairs that they wanted to upcycle. I’ve advised them on how to recover them and now they’re excited to go off and work on the project.”
“The best thing that you can give someone is knowledge and confidence,” says Jay. “When you give someone knowledge and confidence you let them know that it’s okay to make a mistake. There’s no need to be scared – there’s always ways around things. Nine times out of ten just being told that gives people the confidence to give it a go.”
I ask Lizzie Gadgeby Bell, Communications Lead at the Rediscovery Centre, why people are coming to the Repair Cafe and not simply opting to shop in the likes of the nearby big name Swedish furniture store.
“People come in because they have something that’s broken but they don’t know how to fix it. They are looking to learn the skills to fix it themselves,” says Lizzie. “The items are often gorgeous things inherited from their parents or grandparents but they’re a bit wobbly or have some water stains on them and they need to be revived. We give them tips and tricks to bring them back to life. Sometimes it’s as simple as giving a person the confidence to know what to look up on Google or YouTube.”
“The demographic at the Repair Cafes is very mixed – today we’ve had people from about two to 80. We have parents and children coming in to learn how to maintain their bikes and people generally of a slightly older demographic wanting to know what to do with furniture. Many of us have lost a lot of our repair skills so these events are great for getting people back into it – at our clothing repair table today we were teaching people who haven’t sewn since they were in school.”
“If you want to know how to fix something, the knowledge is here,” says Lizzie of the Repair Cafe. “For us it’s about giving people the confidence and the skills so that they can do things themselves but also so that they can potentially teach the rest of the family too.”
The next Repair Cafe at the Rediscovery Centre takes place this Saturday 14th June from 10am to 4pm. Find out more about the Rediscovery Centre here and register for Saturday’s event here.
Not sure you can tackle a repair job yourself? Repair my Stuff is a great resource for finding experts and professionals who can fix what you can’t. Find out more here.
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