Jon Gorey - Globe Correspondent
January 13, 2021 5:00 am
In November, with the cold approaching and the pandemic worsening, Dr. Ernest Mandel of Newton started thinking about building a home ice rink, so his four boys, ages 3 to 14, could be guaranteed at least some outdoor and active fun this winter. Mandel’s neighbors, with whom his family had established a quarantine pod, were avid skaters themselves and also excited about the idea.
So Mandel started researching rink systems and talking to other rink builders. He settled on the Iron Sleek system, and invested more than $600 in the kit hardware and lumber. It took a while before the weather cooperated with Mandel’s busy schedule as a kidney specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Hebrew SeniorLife. But on an unseasonably warm Sunday in mid-December, he started building, with “my kids and the neighbors working together to hold the boards in place, remove twigs and rocks from the area, fill in the divots and holes in the ground, and sand the boards as smooth as possible,” he said.