photo by Brie Cohen

Floyd Helland walks down the stairs past one of the harder puzzles he has put together, the penguin puzzle on the far right. The basement is where the majority of his framed jigsaw puzzles hang. Since 2001, Helland has been spending his free time putting together jigsaw puzzles and creating frames for them.

Prairie Profiles: Floyd Helland

Man has 60 puzzles hanging in his home

Staff

Published Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Stop by Floyd Helland’s home in Albert Lea and you are sure to be shown around the basement. The basement is where Helland spends quite a bit of time, especially in the winter.

“Wintertime I get down there, and I can’t quit,” he said.

Helland can’t quit working away on a new challenge.

A new jigsaw puzzle.

“Puzzles have just kind of intrigued me,” he said.

After retiring, Helland was looking for something to do.

“You can only watch TV so long,” he said.

So in 2001 he started putting together a few puzzles, and by 2002 he got more into it.

“Every winter it got more and more,” Helland’s friend Penny Nelsen said.

Helland said he has put together around 130 to 140 puzzles. About 60 of those are hung around his home, mostly in his basement, in frames he created with old wood, varnish and some decorative items. Some of his children and siblings even have some of the framed puzzles.

To get the puzzles, Helland goes to Wal-Mart, Fleet Farm, Cabela’s, Target, ShopKo, Mall of America and anywhere else he can find a good deal on a puzzle he is looking for. The kind of puzzles Helland likes are old barns, John Deere tractors and different series of puzzles with the same theme and style.

Helland said he pretty much started framing the puzzles right away. To frame them, he flips the completed puzzle over and sticks strips of masking tape along the entire backside. He then uses Elmer’s School Glue to adhere the puzzle to a homemade wood backing. He then cuts out pieces for a rectangular and uses glue and staples to keep it together. He also sands and varnishes the wood.

When Helland first started framing the puzzles, the frames were pretty plain. After a while, however, he started getting more fancy. He glues different doodads on the frame to match the puzzle. There is a large assortment of paints and doodads in his framing workroom in the basement.

Anytime he sees a deal on something he can use, such as beads or crystals, he’ll pick it up for a future frame. On a John Deere puzzle, Helland has toy John Deere tractors glued to the frame. Helland also glues on wooden words. Originally he bought the wooden letters, but lately he has been cutting them out by hand on his bandsaw.

This summer he has worked in the basement a few times a week or so at his leisure, but winter is coming, and Helland will most likely be down there working away.

Helland originally lived in Emmons. He worked at the Ford Garage and ran the Corner Store Restaurant. His wife died in 1995. He left the garage and the restaurant and worked at Wal-Mart for about 2 1/2 years in Albert Lea. He sold his house in Emmons at the end of January and now resides in Albert Lea with Nelsen.

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