Yesterday, August 27, installers for the Irwin Seating Company out of Grand Rapids, Michigan, installed the new seats at the Players Guild of Dearborn. The six man crew worked for approximately twelve hours to install the 244 seats.
The seats arrived in a semi-trailer and were loaded into the Guild via the loading dock in the shop. In the picture on the left, the boxes containing the seats and seat parts can be seen on the stage.
The first part of the installation was creating a chalk grid on the Guild floor. Constantly referring to an Irwin seating plan, the installers marked the floor to show exactly where each seat would go and where it’s bolts that will hold the seats in place would be drilled into the floor.
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When the grid was complete, the crew assembled two “test chairs” to determine if everything was working correctly.
Following the “test chair” assembly, the crew installed the seat supports for all 244 chairs. They can be seen in the center picture. The paper on the floor is one copy of the Irwin seating plan.
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Finally, the crew installed all the seat backs and seat cushions. Then they went methodically through the auditorium securing all the bolts.
The new seats look great, both from the front and the back. The two aisles are much wider than they were and the space between the rows is also much wider than it was.
A video camera can be seen in the third picture. It belongs to James Mayne, our Production Governor. It was set to create a time-lapse video of the installation. That should be fun to watch.
Dave Wood, our Stage Governor, says, “Now that the seats are in there are only 784 more things to do before we can open.” A bunch of us will be trying to pare down the list this weekend. Join us starting Saturday at 9:00AM.
