Surplus linen fabric, cut to size, for Goodrich and Sewall.

When Yvette Belleau, Facilities Lead Custodian, reached out to the Williams College Makerspace/FabLab, she had a very specific eyesore on her hands: the well-loved bulletin boards in Sewall and Goodrich were showing their age. Years of taped-up flyers had left the edges frayed and curling, with scraps of old tape and paper still clinging to the corners, while the cork itself was pocked with hundreds of stray staples left behind by postings past. Hand-picking each one out by hand is nobody’s idea of a good afternoon, so the Makerspace offered a faster fix — a fresh layer of upcycled fabric to recover both boards from scratch. The team cut fabric to size for each corkboard and delivered it straight to Yvette, turning a tedious de-stapling job into a simple re-cover.

Sewall bulletin board: original condition

Sewall bulletin board: rehabilitated condition

Goodrich bulletin board: rehabilitated condition (we forgot to take a photo of its original condition)

Of course, no project is complete without one small snag: a fresh fabric surface needs a staple gun to match, and the one in Facilities’ toolkit was built for window screens, not bulletin boards. As Yvette shared with David Keiser-Clark, Manager of the Makerspace, “I don’t have a staple gun and the only one that Facilities has is one for window screens. I do believe I have one at home somewhere but I was wondering if you might have one here?” It’s a small reminder of what campus collaboration looks like in practice — one department’s surplus solving another’s staple-sized headache, one bulletin board at a time.