The rescue operation of the old wooden city block of Toivola Old Courtyard in Jyväskylä, that in our part began in 2010, has been one of the most challenging renovation projects for us. The courtyard has seven cultural historically valuable log buildings, and we participated in renovating all of them. With the oldest residential building in the city still in place, The Sparvin House, we dismantled the log frame and took it with us to Karstula to be restored. After that we re-erected the frame to its original site and built a roof over it. We were able to save 30 percent of the over 150-year-old logs the building was constructed of. Replacement logs were found from two drying barns in Karstula, built in the 1880’s, which we used in carving over 1100 meters of missing logs. In the Toivola Old Courtyard, the repair work done by us varied from straightening a porch to re-carving a whole log building. When we began shoeing the end of a storehouse located on the lot, we discovered a pest population from the building that was rotting the log. We were able to save the building by changing 16 of its 17 log layers which required 300 meters of log. We conducted the repair work in all seven buildings under the supervision of the Museum of Central Finland, and the repair work was granted the Central Finland Cultural Environment Award.
