The COVID-19 pandemic could have spelled the end of an all-volunteer nonprofit group, but for the East Contra Costa Historical Society, it became an opportunity to regroup to spruce up and reinvent its decades-old museum and its outbuildings.

Not only was the 1.3-acre museum site closed for more than 2½ years, but tours for schoolchildren also were canceled, giving some 20 volunteers time to do the kind of deep cleaning and retooling of museum displays at the historic Byer-Nail House, former Eden Plain School, resource center and agricultural shed not possible before.

The museum reopens this Saturday — only days after tours began again for the kids — and visitors will see many new and revamped displays both inside and outside.

“It really just gave us a chance to kind of sit back and look at all of it and say, ‘Wow, what are the treasures, the real treasures that we have here?’ ” volunteer Mary Black said. “And how are we going to put them out there so that they make sense to people and they tell the story of our history? So, it was a good opportunity to get to do that.”

Black, who also serves as board second vice president of the East Contra Costa HistoricalSociety, said the museum has been growing over the years with many donations, for which volunteers have not always had time to research and analyze.

“It was a really good time (during the closure) to sit back and examine how it all fit together,” she said. “We weeded out some things so you could really pay attention to important things. And we stored some things so we could put other things up and change displays, so we didn’t have the same things out all the time.”

Museum historian Virginia Karlberg said volunteers “took out pounds of stuff that had been sitting in there for years.”

One volunteer, Chuck Hunter, completely revamped what the museum calls Homer’s Shed, a 40-foot-long shed of agricultural equipment and displays, putting together a storyline with short videos and informational placards, she said.

“We have turned that into a very nice chronological agricultural display of East Contra Costa County,” East Contra Costa Historical Society president Doreen Forlow said. “We took everything out, and put pieces back in.”

In the new interactive display, visitors can pick up tools, push buttons to hear stories such as how early East Contra Costa County farmers harvested dry wheat and how agricultural practices later were modernized when the Balfour, Guthrie & Co. came in and built the first irrigation system in the early 1900s.

There’s also a working 1947 fire engine, a tractor, caboose, covered wagon and a working windmill in the outdoor area. Visitors can pump water while their friends scrub clothes the old-fashioned way, by hand on tin-and-wood washboards, and then hang them up on string washlines.

The main buiding, the Byer/Nail House, a farmhouse built in 1878 by early pioneers Johnson and Elizabeth Fancher and later sold to the Byer and Nail families, also needed a lot of work.

Forlow said the group also tackled “the unbelievable problem of our 140-year-old windows in the Byer/Nail House, which were rotting away and falling out of their frames.” A crew of volunteers, who jokingly refer to themselves as The Breakers because they take a lot of breaks, researched and became proficient in repairing and rebuilding the unusual-sized window frames as well as many other damaged wooden areas of the house, she said.

“It was hard to put them (the windows) in upstairs,” Karlburg said, noting many of the volunteers were in their 70s and 80s. “So, it’s a little difficult to do that work on a ladder at that age.”

To keep the museum in the limelight, the volunteers held their first Christmas on the Farm festival last year and managed to keep the decades-old fall barbecue tradition alive and help raise money by turning it in 2020 into a drive-through event, one of the first of its kind in the area during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Black, a retired teacher, also rounded up a group of retired colleagues and spent several months cleaning the inside of the main house — including all the displays and the walls, Karlberg said.

While they were at it, the volunteers revamped all the displays in eight rooms of the historic Byer-Nail House, Fowler said.

“It was a huge task,” she said. “They made new displays with new signage that tells the story of each room.”

Examples are the Uniform Room, with displays dating from the Civil War to the Vietnam War, the Sewing Room with a spinning wheel, treadle machine, crocheting and weaving equipment, and the Dining Room, with displays of bygone area entertainment such as bands, musical instruments and photos from theater groups and organizations like the Odd Fellows, Women’s Club, Native Daughters of the Golden West. Artifacts from the Byron Hot Springs, including newly found metal objects such as room keys, and old windows are also on display as are the old pianos from the pioneer Knight and Byer families.

Also part of the renovation was to completely revamp the Byer-Nail House’s kitchen, Fowler said.

Another building houses a 1,600-square-foot Resource Center, now able to provide research opportunities for academics, businesses, government and residents.

Also spruced up was the 1880s-era Eden Plain School, where docents give lessons to visiting schoolchildren who sit at one of the 30 antique wooden desks.

”It was once a junky little building,” Karlberg said of the school’s early beginnings at the museum. “And now it’s one of the prettiest schoolhouses that I’ve ever been to.”

“We have a lot of fun things you can do and see,” she added.

The museum, located at 3890 Sellers Ave. at the border of Brentwood and Knightsen, is open on Saturdays and the third Sunday of each month from 2-4 p.m. More information is available at www. eastcontracostahistory.org.