The Rafael Núñez House Museum, located in the El Cabrero district, in Cartagena de Indias, For nearly five months it has been the training space for young apprentices at Etcar School of Workshop Cartagena de Indias.

Apply the “learning by doing” methodology to apprentices in carpentry, masonry, painting, welding and gardening under the guidance of teachers and the supervision of the enterprise’s Director of Works, They have advanced their training process by performing the maintenance and restoration work required by the house museum.

This project was made possible thanks to the investment made by the Ministry of Culture through the signing of Agreement No. 4295 of 2021.

Works on the first floor

The first phase of the project started in the central courtyard of the house where the green spaces are being revived. So, A horticultural officer certified to work at height demonstrated to the trainees in this workshop how to remove dry palm trees from coconut trees Its height can reach 30 meters.

Soil also removed, adding black earth, gauge and file, In preparation for planting and transporting ornamental plants.

On the other hand, construction apprentices installed finishes in the bathrooms They made concrete covers to cover a drainage channel located in the central courtyard.

woodwork

The Rafael Núñez House Museum, with Caribbean Republic architecture, is built of wood, Materials affected over time by termites, flooding caused by moisture damage, and attacks by biological agents such as fungi; This has caused the accelerated deterioration of some elements.

To stop the damage, a special technology is used in cultural assets whose main component is wood.Immunization process. This must be done periodically to prevent the appearance of fungi, termites and moths, among others, which feed mainly on wood, changing its appearance and structure, and causing irreparable damage.

The most degraded items are made again in the Etcar Carpentry workshopAs with the two staircases with which the house must connect to the second floor: in one the sections that sustained the most damage were replaced and in the other completely reconstructed.

For this specific function, forEtcar hired a carpentry technician, who graduated from the institution in 1998, Nemecio Gómez Rodríguez, an expert in transforming workA skill that is transferred to the trainees in the workshop.

A machine in which this process is carried out is called a lathe, depending on the diameter of the material with which you are working, the time required for turning will be. The manufacture of handrails for a balcony or first floor staircase can take from 45 minutes to an hour.

Space recovery

Among the actions of the trainees is also the restoration of some spaces, One of them is the living room adjacent to the hall where two windows and two doors are closed with drywall walls. Young men restored and made wooden windows to restore the original characteristics of a Caribbean home to this property.

Additionally, in the front green area of ​​the House Museum, a canal is opened to direct the course of water that would normally have stagnated in that part of the street, preventing it from entering the house as it has on previous occasions.

museology

In addition to the training process that Etcar implements at the Rafael Núñez House Museum, within which restoration work is being carried out, the management of this site of national cultural interest identifies strategies to promote re-visiting.