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Renovations to Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center, considered the state's oldest opera house, began this month. A crew from Barn Boards & More, a local wood salvaging business, was pulling up and saving the tongue-and-groove floor boards from the theater Thursday to reuse as flooring or make into tabletops. By December 2023, the three-story performing arts venue in Gardiner is expected to reopen to the public with a 400-seat theater, a large lobby and concession area, full-service box office, green rooms for performers, and an elevator. Local hotel owner Benjamin Johnson turned the former livery stable into a performance hall in 1884, and it became an opera house in 1888. All photos by Kennebec Journal photojournalist Joe Phelan.

Josh Baker pulls up a floor board Thursday at Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner. A crew from Barn Boards & More was removing and saving the tongue and groove floor boards on the third-floor theater. The Gardiner business, run by Brett Trefethen and his wife Amy Trefethen, usually dismantles barns and then either sells the boards or uses them to make furniture they sell. He said that the boards might be reused as flooring or could be made into tabletops. The demolition was part of a renovation project that started this month and is expected to be completed in December 2023.

The “Cobbs & Mitchell ‘Electric'” brand name stamped in the back of flooring salvaged from the Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner. Brett Trefethen, owner of the company salvaging the flooring, said the boards were probably made in the early 20th century when lumber mills were switching over to being electrically powered, so that’s probably why it’s mentioned in branding.

Brett Trefethen of Barn Boards & More shows strips of a poster that workers found used as shims, or tapered wedge, under floor boards the company was salvaging Thursday at Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner.

Trevor Sprague pulls nails from salvaged floor boards near an “Opera House” sign Thursday at Johnson Hall Performing Arts Center in Gardiner.

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