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  • HOME
  • About
    • 30th Anniversary >
      • 30th Anniversary BINGO
    • Who We Are >
      • Vision and Mission
      • History
      • Strategic Plan
      • FAQs
      • Financial Information
      • Press Kit
    • What We Do >
      • Newsletters and Media
    • Why We Do It
    • Current Builds
    • Completed Builds
    • Our Environmental Impact >
      • Soak Up the Sun Solar Project
    • Staff & Board >
      • Board of Directors Application
    • Employment Opportunities
    • Habitat for Humanity International >
      • Global Village Builds
  • Get Involved
    • Volunteer >
      • Individual Opportunities
      • Group Opportunities
    • Internship Opportunities
    • Housing Advocacy
    • Special Events
    • UW - La Crosse Chapter
  • Our Programs
    • Homeownership >
      • FAQs
      • How to Apply
    • Sustainability
    • Critical Home Repair
    • ReClaim
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      • ReNew the Block
      • Neighbors Day
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    • Faith Build >
      • Faith Build Champions
      • Habitat & Thrivent Partnership
  • Donate
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Reupholstering a Chair

4/26/2022

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By April Carroll, Habitat for Humanity - La Crosse Area ReStore Intern

​Tools:
Hammer
Screwdriver
Needle nose pliers
Tape measure
Staple Gun
Sewing pins
Scissors
Sandpaper
Sewing tape measure
Materials:
Chair
Upholstery fabric (I used about 3 yards for this vintage French style chair, but different chair types will have different fabric needs)
Scrap fabric
Small nails/tacks
Batting (if replacing old batting)
Wood stain
Cambric dust cover
​
The first step after you get your chair should be to photograph it from all angles. As you take your old upholstery fabric off, you should also photograph each step to use later when putting on the new fabric. ​
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​ 
Remove the back piece first by removing the small nails or tacks that hold it in place. I used a flathead screwdriver to lift the old nails out enough to remove them with a needle-nose pliers. Keep the fabric as intact as you can and pin it to a piece of scrap fabric to use as a template for the new fabric. When tracing the old fabric, be sure to give an extra couple inches of excess around the old piece. Since the fabric gets trimmed after it is already on the chair, you will need the extra to make sure it fits properly.
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I made sure to take close up photos of areas I thought may be tricky when reassembling the upholstery, and generally at each stage took photos from relevant angles to help me put it back together later.
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​After you remove the back, front, and seat fabric, you can decide whether or not to keep the old batting or replace it. I chose to keep the original batting.
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At this stage, it is optional for you to sand and re-stain the exposed wood on the chair. I started off with a medium-grit sandpaper (about 150) and when I was down to the exposed wood, switched to a higher (200+) grit until I was happy with the results. I wrapped sandpaper around a needle-nose pliers to get into the tricky spots and details. Putting down plastic tarp on the batting can help keep sawdust and wood stain from getting into the cushions, but you can always remove them instead. With chairs made before the 1950s, there is usually hay or horsehair under the batting and it can be difficult to separate without making a mess, so this is a nice alternative option. After you have sanded and stained your chair, you can start putting the new fabric on.
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I started with the seat since it was the last thing I took off. Using the new fabric I cut from the old pieces, I could then reverse the steps I took to deconstruct the chair. This part can be tricky and fabric pins will be your best friend. Many fabric stores do offer upholstery twist screws to hold thicker fabric in place as you form it over the chair, but straight pins worked fine for me. The new fabric may not be a perfect fit, so use caution when trimming it to fit around the legs so you don’t take too much off. I used a staple gun to attach the bottom, folding as needed to get a tight fit. I found that squaring up and securing the front edge first allowed me to pull the fabric taut and more squarely secure the rest (it took a few tries). Keeping those bits of plastic tarp between the legs and cushion helped the fabric slide into place easier as well.
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After the seat and front are on, the last piece of upholstery you put on should be the back section. After carefully pinning it into place, you can use decorative tacks to secure it, or you can use small nails. I found sewing tape to work nicely to help space the tacks evenly as I could pin the tape measure directly to the chair. As a tip, you can use a needle-nose pliers to hold the decorative tacks in place straight, so they don’t bend out of shape when you hammer them in.
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The last step in finishing your chair is to add an optional Cambric Dust cover underneath the chair using a staple gun.
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Congratulations! You have reupholstered a chair!
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Kathy's Buffet

9/16/2021

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This old beauty of a buffet was in desperate need of some TLC. Thankfully, it caught the eye of one of our ReStore volunteers! Kathy purchased it (for less than $50! Whatta steal!), took it home, and spruced it up as a gift for her daughter. 
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Chalk paint all the way!
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Kathy's daughter wanted caning for the face of the buffet.
​Tip: if the caning is hard to work with, soak it in warm water for 15-20 minutes to soften it. Then apply it to your piece with spray adhesive!
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To update the look of the piece, Kathy cut off the original legs and added new ones.
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After attaching the legs, Kathy painted the entire piece with dark grey chalk paint. After it dried, she gave it a second coat. Then it was time to wax! She gave the buffet one coat of CLEAR wax and let it dry. Then, to complete the look, she added an even coat of black wax. To seal everything up, she completed the piece with another coat of clear wax.

Next came the caning, an element Kathy's daughter specifically requested for this piece.
Once the black wax was done, Kathy wasn't 100% sure if the caning was what the buffet needed. While the texture was a welcome addition, the color hid the decorative drawer pulls. In a best-of-both-worlds approach, Kathy ended up painting the caning black.
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Without caning
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With caning
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Caning painted black
Projects like these are a delight to see. Sometimes at the ReStore it's easy to overlook roughed up and well-used things in favor of newer, cleaner options. But now? Now it's clear that this piece of furniture was well-made and worth the time and effort Kathy put into it. Hopefully it will last her daughter a good long while. And who knows? Maybe someday way in the future it will turn up in another ReStore looking worse for the wear, just waiting for another creative individual to work their magic!
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The Coffee Table Seat

7/23/2021

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So, after 2 years of using a free Craigslist loveseat in our living room, I decided it was peeling too much to stay anymore. As is traditional in my house, I dismantled it. I saved the pleather and foam for future sewing projects, stuck the frame in my garage with the intention of using it to make a shelf, and then turned my attention to what to put in its place. 
I decided, at least for the time being, I didn't want another large piece of furniture in our living room. I wanted a comfy bench for sitting. Somewhere just big enough that my dog could curl up and take a nap.

At the same time as I was going through this project at home, I was also running a thought exercise at work. What in the world could we do with all these coffee tables coming into the ReStore?
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Here's a gratuitous picture of my cat, Momo, checking out the carcass of the loveseat.

Thus was born The Coffee Seat: a bench made out of a coffee table. 

Now, I am under no delusion that I invented the concept myself, nor that it's  novel in any way. What made the Coffee Seat special in my personal history of craft projects is that I thought of it, bought the coffee table at the ReStore, and in two hours had a completed bench. I invested $15 in the coffee table; the rest of the supplies I had on hand! ​
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Here's my goodest boy, Bower, giving it a try! He was a little unsure if he actually fit. My oldest cat, Del, definitely loved it from the moment I finished it!
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In the end, the Coffee Seat spent about a week in our house. The neighbors put their old loveseat on the curb and we were immediately smitten (mainly because Bower had made it perfectly clearly he's a loveseat-or-bust kinda dog.) Thankfully, my sibling came by for a visit and immediately declared that the Coffee Seat would make a perfect bench at the end of their bed. So, it moved a few blocks away to my parents' home, we adopted our trash couch to fill the void, and I satisfied my curiosity of what it would take to turn a coffee table into a seat! 

Trash Couch Photoshoot: "Quality from the Curb"

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Sewing Cabinet Conversion

6/18/2021

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BEFORE
Our volunteer, Kathy, knocked this one out of the park! She made an elegant "drink cart" out of an old sewing table. We get tables like this at the ReStore semi-frequently,
and it's nice to see them refreshed
​and repurposed! 
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BEFORE
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AFTER
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Customer Customization Spotlight

5/28/2021

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We love seeing things our customers have refinished! Here are a couple of projects folks have sent in for us to show-off. There's a lot of drab-to-fab opportunities at the ReStore; you just have to put in some elbow grease and creativity! 
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James purchased this hutch at the ReStore and transformed it into a reading nook!
James also repurposed
this piece into
​a coffee bar!
(No before
​picture included.)
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BEFORE
Way back in June of 2019, Rebecca sent in pictures of the glider she repainted. It's like it's brand new!
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AFTER
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Bar None, This is the Easiest Refurbish Ever

5/4/2021

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Here's a secret I probably shouldn't share, but I'm going to anyway. Why? Because the more of us that do this one little thing, the less stuff that ends up in the landfill.

Secret: Most chairs and barstools are ridiculously easy to recover. I'm not kidding! 9/10 chairs, just flip them over, unscrew 4-5 screws, and off pops the seat. Then, with some fabric (something sturdy, preferably), a stapler, and a bit of finesse, you have a new look for an old seat!

The main thing to look out for is if there's too much fabric on the cushion to go cover it with the new fabric, in which case you just need to grab a flathead screwdriver and pry out the old staples and remove the upholstery. Heck, if you get that far, you could always add more foam to the seat if you need it to be cushier! 

When stapling on the new fabric, be sure to start by anchoring it on each side before moving around the entire perimeter. That way the fabric is pulled taut in every direction and you avoid a big bunch of material when you make it around the circle (or square).

Here's a barstool I recovered before it hit the floor in the ReStore. I timed myself refinishing it, and including the time it took me to track down my supplies, it took a mere fifteen minutes. 

​My favorite part of this project is that the new fabric came from a couch that wasn't up to ReStore standards. We had to let the couch go, but I squirreled the cushions away knowing that someday the perfectly-good-pleather would come in handy.
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BEFORE
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DURING
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AFTER
I'm telling you, it's too simple! 
-Kali Brokaw
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Chalk Paint Refinishing

5/4/2021

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One of our volunteers, Kathy, purchased this dining room table at the ReStore and gave it a wonderful update! Here's a bit about how she accomplished the refinishing, the materials she used, and the gorgeous before-and-after pictures!
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"I painted the table with white chalk paint (2 coats).  Then I rubbed a clear wax over that.  Once dry (a day or two later), I used sand paper to sand areas to distress look.  Then I used a dark wax to rub over distressed areas.  Once again, I let it dry.  Then I applied one more coat of clear wax over entire table."
                                                                                                            
BEFORE
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AFTER
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I a-DOOR My Raised Garden Bed!

4/25/2021

2 Comments

 
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Sometimes we get strangely mundane donations at the ReStore. A while ago, we received a bunch of solid-core doors from the Franciscan Sisters. When I say a bunch, I mean a BUNCH. We're talking 50+ doors, all of them weighing at least 40lbs. While we have sold a fair number of them, we have yet to clear them out. There's only so many people in this town with heavy-door needs.

Now, an obvious use for a thick door like this is a workbench top. I didn't really need a workbench, though. What I really needed was a garden bed.

I have a ton of plants, but I rarely get to enjoy the literal fruits of my labor; the rabbits are happy to do that for me. I've known for years I wanted a really tall garden bed to keep my produce safe, and these doors helped me do just that. It turned out so well, my parents asked me to make a pair for them as well!

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All you need to do this yourself is:
2 solid-core doors
4 36" 4x4s
A box of 3" deck screws
Weatherproof paint
Drill/driver
Circular saw


For my garden bed, I knew I wanted it big and deep so I could throw all my yard waste from the winter inside before I topped it off with dirt. My parents' beds, though, I made half the height so we didn't have to use as much fill. To create the two beds, I used four doors in total, ripping all of them in half the long way, and then halving two of those pieces to make the ends of each bed. Really, you could make yours any dimensions your heart desires! Essentially the doors are just thick pieces of plywood.

Before putting everything together, I painted the pieces with exterior paint. I don't have a real idea of how long it will hold up, but so far so good. It's been in my yard for about a year at the time of writing this, and so far the only change is that it's dirtier than it used to be and there are a few spots where the veneer is peeling up. A fresh coat of paint should fix that.

To assemble things, I used 4x4s at each of the interior corners. I laid them out on the ground, then rested the long sides of the bed on top of them and screwed them together. When determining how far in to set the 4x4s from the edge, I measured the thickness of the door and used that as my guide. That way, when I screwed the short sides of the bed to the 4x4s, the edges all ended up flush.

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Standing the bed up in my yard was tricky because I did it by myself, but with some careful maneuvering I propped up the long sides with the 4x4s attached and the unattached end caps between them. I eyeballed squaring things up, then screwed on the ends.

Once everything was together, I touched up the paint and waited for it to dry. Then the real work of filling it began. I took all my yard waste and shoved it inside, added dirt, waited for it to settle, added more dirt, waited for it to settle, added more dirt, waited for it to settle, and then topped it off with some mulch. A few sweet potato slips later, and I have a beautiful raised garden bed!

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-by Kali Brokaw
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2 Comments

Gallery Wall How-To

11/18/2020

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by Pam Hartwell
My project started with a very tall wall (14’) in the room where people enter my home. My home is a 1906 farmhouse where I grew up, and then it was my mother’s home most of my adult life. In the early 1970s the old farmhouse got an addition and the front room was designed to fit a piece of furniture that my grandfather saved from a home he was working on. The piece was a 9’ tall dark mahogany, carved wood, marble topped, mirrored sideboard with heavy religions themes. 
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 After my mom died, I needed to make the home my own and decided the heavy and very large piece was not my style and put it up for sale. It was clearly a statement piece and I wanted something with similar wow factor, but also more modern. I also knew I wanted a couch on that wall to look out at the wall of windows that it faces.

What a great spot for one of those gallery-style arrangements of art!

I l
ove eclectic art and working at the ReStore allows me to constantly be building my collection. I also had some posters I had dumpster-dived years ago, some beautiful carvings made by my great grandfather, and art made by my mom. Variety of mediums is the key to a good gallery wall; I had paintings, yarn art, pencil drawings, ceramic pieces, flat and bulky wood and plaster carvings, and lots of different styles of frames.

​Here are the materials needed to complete this project:

  • Freshly painted wall (or at least one that is in good shape and clean)
  • Art (variety of sizes, shapes, and
  • materials works best)
  • Level - at least 2’ long
  • Newspaper and scissors​
  • Reusable mounting putty
  • Command strips
  • Nails
  • Hammer
  • Blue tape
  • Sharpies - big ones
  • Ladder
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​Getting Started
Prepare the wall and decide how much space you want to use. I measured out a 10’ by 10’ square (this left 2 full feet on either side and top and bottom in case the art needed to expand out) and used a level and some mounting putty to put up a blue tape line to show a level bottom and two level side lines. I knew my gallery was not going to be entirely contained in the blue tape lines, but I appreciated that I had level guides to work with. ​
Gather Your Art
 Pull all your art together and lay it out. Look at how it goes together and think about the pieces that you want to highlight; I chose 4 rectangle pieces for each or the corners to create a sense of order. At this point I curated out some pieces and sought new pieces for a nice balance of shapes, sizes, and a variety of mediums. Make sure each piece is clean and ready to hang with either a wire mount or command strips. Command strips are great for ease of hanging, but if your piece is rough or dirty, it will fall. I knew we would be sitting below these pieces, so I made sure the really heavy carvings were secure with nails in studs (I marked them with pencil lines and the help of a stud finder).  
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Once you have decided what you want, make paper cutout copies of your art. Transfer the shape of the artwork to newspaper by tracing around the frame and then cut out the shape. I also decided to use fat sharpies to make basic drawings of each item on the newspaper so I would know what it was when I had it hanging on the wall. Plus it was fun!

Start hanging the newspaper on the wall using mounting putty. 
Use 1-2 pieces of putty near the top of the newspaper art and be careful not to rub the newspaper on the wall, especially if your wall is light colored. I decided I wanted 4 square or rectangle larger pieces to anchor my corners, so I started with those and worked my way towards the center. I decided to leave at least 4 inches in-between each piece to help with uniformity. I also decided a few pieces would go outside the blue tape. The great thing about the newspaper art is that I could move things easily.

Once you have all the paper shapes on the wall, another set of eyes is good. I had my daughter helping the entire process and my boyfriend chiming in with ideas. Once we had all the newspaper art hung we spent a day looking and adjusting.

​Hang the Art
Use the newspaper as your guide by figuring out where the nail needs to be on the art then mark it on the newspaper. It will often show through because newspaper is thin, or you can lift/fold the newspaper so you can mark the wall before you take the newspaper down.
Even if you think you know where everything is going, leave the newspaper up until you replace it with art. The newspaper continues to be your guide to see if you want more room for an item. It is MUCH easier to rearrange the gallery design when it’s newspaper rather than as art with holes in the wall. 
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I hung the art from the outside in, but if I had it to do over, I would recommend hanging from the inside pieces first and move out as you can always expand your space on the outside edge, but not in the middle.
Take down the blue tape, use the level again to make sure each piece is good. Adjust as needed. I used the putty on some of the bottom corners of the art to give it good contact with the wall and help keep it level.

Hot tip! Give each piece enough room. Remember the actual art is 3-dimensional and it will look more crowded when it’s the real piece rather than just pieces of newspaper.

Final Step
Sit back and enjoy your Gallery Wall! 
I love this project because it utilized great pieces of art from the ReStore and really gives wow factor to our entry room. Perfect solution for a large wall!
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Gallery Wall 2020, Pam Hartwell
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Quick Wardrobe Conversion

10/29/2020

2 Comments

 
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If you've been shopping at the ReStore in the past year, you've likely seen these wardrobes. This excellent donation from a local business has been a staple on our salesfloor for a while.

​Now a few of them are playing a role behind-the-scenes! We needed some aesthetically pleasing storage space in our meeting room, and I knew the wardrobes would do the trick.


The first thing I did was take the clothing rod out. Then, I had some short pieces of lumber on hand that served perfectly as cleats to hold the shelves. For a more detailed step-by-step on how to install simple closet shelves, here's a nice blog on the subject: https://www.ana-white.com/blog/2014/06/easiest-pantry-or-closet-shelving

From there, it was as easy as cutting plywood to size, hauling the wardrobe to its destination, and filling it up!
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 The room they were going in was not quite big enough for three wardrobes, but by stealing the doors off one, cutting them to size, and attaching them between the other two wardrobes, I solved that conundrum! A plank of plywood topped everything off and gave us some more vertical space.
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​If you've been looking for some quick, easy storage solutions, these wardrobes are an awesome, sturdy solution. I've also been eyeing them up for potential garden tool storage. I think they might be just the right size to hold dormant rakes, spades, and post-hole-diggers during these cold winter months.

You could probably hang clothes in them too, I suppose.

​-Kali
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    Kali Brokaw and Kari Siverhus. We love to repurpose, upcycle, and breathe new life into things. Our focus is on the sustainable and artistic aspect of things at the Habitat for Humanity La Crosse Area ReStore. 

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HABITAT FOR HUMANITY - LA CROSSE AREA
Providing Families with a Place to Call Home
Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit founded on the conviction that every family should have a decent, safe, and affordable place to live. We partner with homeowners and the community to build decent, safe, and affordable housing.

CONTACT

HABITAT RESTORE

QUICK LINKS

Phone: 608-785-2373
Email: info@habitatlacrosse.org
​Mailing Address: 
3181 Berlin Drive
La Crosse, WI 54601
Address:
3181 Berlin Drive
La Crosse, WI 54601

Hours:
Wednesday-Saturday: 10 am to 6 pm

The ReStore is closed on the following days:
  • Thursday, November  24, 2022
  • Friday, November  25, 2022
  • Saturday, December 24, 2022
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