MANCHESTER — Looking for a chair, some dishes? Maybe a spinning wheel or a set of fireplace tools?
The Maine Cabin Masters have you covered.
On Saturday, as part of Manchester Community Days, the stars of the DIY Network show will host a yard sale to clear out items they acquired with the purchase of 915 Western Ave. to benefit the Capital Clubhouse, a vocational program for adults with mental illness in Augusta. The Capital Clubhouse will run the yard sale.
Chase Morrill opens the barn doors Thursday of the farmhouse his family recently purchased in Manchester. The stars of “Maine Cabin Masters” are opening Kennebec Cabin Co., a retail and event facility at the location. Kennebec Journal photo by Andy Molloy
On Thursday, standing in the white clapboard house that will be the home of the Kennebec Cabin Company, Chase Morrill said he and his crew had been thinking about having a space of their own for a variety of reasons, and they had been scouting spaces in the area for likely candidates.
“I was on my way home headed down Granite Hill Road, and I saw this place for sale,” Morrill said.
On his dashboard he already had a contract to lease a space in Hallowell that he was ready to sign, but 1850s-era farmhouse caught his eye.
Morrill was already familiar with the home. When he was handyman, he did work for Ruth Daggett, who took meticulous care of the house.
“We’re good friends with the Daggetts,” he said. “Actually the first episode we did was for the Daggetts.”
As it happens, Morrill had gone to high school with Paul Daggett and gave him a call. That was pretty much that — the contract was signed the next day.
Chase Morrill walks through the barn of the farmhouse his family recently purchased in Manchester on Thursday. The stars of “Maine Cabin Masters” are opening Kennebec Cabin Co., a retail and event facility at the location. Kennebec Journal photo by Andy Molloy
By winter, at least part of the space of the farmhouse will be made over into a retail and event space for Cabin Masters.
“We’ll start off selling merchandise from the show,” he said, like hats and T-shirts. “We work with so many artists, it would be great to have space to display some of their stuff. We do a lot custom pieces, and we also work with different vendors, so we figured we might as well pull it all together.”
It will also give them a space to host watching parties with the families they have completed projects for. Right now, that happens in bars, with varying amounts of success.
It’s a hard ask to come into a bar and ask them to turn their TVs to DIY Network, he said, because it can be hard to hear, other patrons might prefer to watch something else, and not all bars have cable packages that include DIY. They can also run into technological issues of one kind or another.
The front of the house, with its kitchen and dining room will be made over for space to accommodate meetings for community groups.
The three bedrooms and bathroom upstairs will be their office space.
The clincher for the space is the 2 acres that come with it that will provide access from Puddleduck Road, he said.
In the meantime, the Maine Cabin Masters are also scheduled to appear as special guests from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday to meet fans and take photos as just one of the free scheduled activities at the Manchester Elementary School Ball Fields.
The event is the successor for the Apple Festival, which was last put on in 2017.
April Gay, chairwoman of Manchester’s Community Enrichment Committee, said the 0435FUN Festival kicks off Friday when the 2019 version of the movie “Aladdin” will be screened at 6:30 p.m., in the gym at the elementary school.
On Saturday, the event includes live music by Shane McNear, bounce houses, a dunk tank, games, food, and arts and crafts. The Manchester Grange will host a silent auction, bake sale and exhibit by the Manchester Historical Society.
A street dance will begin at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Manchester Crossing Mall with music by Double Entendre and food from Diggy’s Dogs.
“We’ve had great support,” Gay said.
For the Cabin Masters — Morrill, Ashley Morrill, Ryan Eldrige, Matt Dix and Jared Baker — the idea of having a headquarters was a distant vision.
When Morrill built his barn in Wayne, he thought for a while that might work, but that was more of a working space.
Early on, he had conversation with Mark Bowe, of Barnwood Builders, another DIY Network show, who said one of the first things he did was open a bricks and mortar store.
As Maine Cabin Masters continued to grow, he said, it made sense to have headquarters and a destination where people could come and see what they do.
“It works well because we’re working in the summertime, and in the summertime there’s enough traffic and tourists around to carry it,” he said. “In the wintertime when things are slow, our episodes are starting to air. If we know what episode it’s going to be, we can have the subcontractors and they can have displays out.”
Having the space also is a strategy that will carry them past the end of the show, whenever that day comes.
“The sky’s the limit with this space,” he said. “It depends on what we have time to do.”
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