Spring and summer of 2025, Sawhorse Revolution teamed up with our wonderful community partner, Mini Mart City Park, to design and build a storage shed that met their unique needs. They envisioned two separate storage areas within the shed, one for storing gallery items and the other side for storing tools used for gardening and the like. With the storage shed assisting in merging two adjacent properties, the overall design of the shed needed to cohesively connect them. GO’C came in to support us through the design process, as well as Krekow Jennings to provide build support. We all collaborated in order to create our initial design that was brought to youth at our design charrette. 

In late spring, we gathered with 12 students at Mini Mart City Park to bring in the youths’ perspective and creativity to our initial design. They spent several hours fine-tuning their individual ideas to forge a collective vision of the shed. Both the roof shape and the siding of the structure were youth-designed. The students wanted to use as much reclaimed and salvaged materials as possible. Additionally, they wanted a versatile exterior siding material that would be conducive to future Mini Mart City Park artistic and environmental projects, such as a living garden wall or a mural. 

After the design charrette, the team prepped to build for two straight weeks. GO’C worked diligently on our plans and were incredible throughout this whole process. Krekow Jennings helped us make sure our plans were buildable in the short time that we had to put on the program. 

This August, we had six students join us for the build. They worked tirelessly every single day to bring the design to life! We had 100% attendance for this program, which demonstrates the teens’ impressive dedication to the project. Krekow Jennings generously donated two of their builders’ time towards this project. Over the course of our two weeks together, youth gained valuable hands-on skills, as well as learning to work together and the importance of effective communication on a job site. 

A huge thank you to Jeremy McGlone & Max Hunold from GO’C and Matthew Hilger & Avery Dehner from Krekow Jennings. 

“It’s a lot more hands on, which is a lot easier to pick up and learn. A lot more fun too because it’s not just–it’s like you’re actually doing things and you see it done so you can actually do it.”- Abbie