I Love a Parade!

I got my arm twisted into participating in a local parade on Saturday by the missus! She works for Key Bank and they wanted to take part in a parade. She figured that Elizabeth would have fun marching down the street. I got to take part too! Wanna see a picture of me?



That's right! I'm in the "Key Toon" suit! Absolute proof that there is little I won't do. It is pretty sad when the guy in the character suit doesn't even work for the company...... and wasn't even paid..... You can see how happy I am?

I Read the News Today- Oh Boy!

The photograph is larger than the article! Must be a slow news day here in the "Gem City". Here is how it reads;

Neighbors take the initiative to spruce up Wyoming Theater
The Walnut Hills Association grew tired of looking at the rundown building and decided to paint it.By Helen Bebbington
Contributing Writer
DAYTON In the early 1900s, the old Wyoming Theater, which faces the intersection of Wyoming Street and Gunckel Avenue, showed silent movies. The arrival of the "talkies" ended its use as a theater. It was a restaurant for a while, and after that, a bar.
However, for about the last 20 years, it's been vacant and has become dilapidated.
Neighbors who live in Walnut Hills appreciated the architecture, but not its neglected appearance. So, armed with paint, brushes and the building owner's permission, neighbors have spent the last two months giving the old theater a fresh, colorful look.
"The only way we're going to get anything done is to do it ourselves," said Gary Leitzell, president of Walnut Hills Association.
Leitzell approached the owner more than a year ago. When nothing happened, Leitzell decided that, rather than complain to the city of Dayton, he would round up a dozen or so people and use $260 of association money to buy paint and equipment.
"It's a matter of community relations, and a sense of pride," said Leitzell. "It wasn't going to get done. This could be done throughout the city. (People need to) take the initiative."
"It looks great; they did a fabulous job," said building owner George *********** of ***** ***********.
***********, has owned the building for three years and is planning on fixing the roof and flooring. He has no definite plans but envisions using the building as offices, or a photography studio. He plans to compensate the Walnut Hills Association, which is a nonprofit group.
"We're tired of looking at everything in Dayton that is dilapidated," said Walnut Hills neighbor David Sparks. "All day long when we worked on it, people came up and thanked us. It just feels really, really good."
The picture is me of course, with your favorite little "munchkin". When she saw it she said "That's me with my daddy at the building!"

There is a reference to this blog so I am seeing lots of local traffic today! Guess I can run but I can't hide.... not that anyone is looking for me.

UPDATE. November 6, 2012. I have been asked to remove the name of the building owner from this blog. He has a problem with it being Googled and associated with a blog named "This Old Crack House". The building was demolished by the city this year. It would appear that the owner who does not wish to be named who planned to fix the roof and floor let the roof and rear wall collapse and the tax payer foot the bill.

The Birds Have Flown!

My 7 pigeons have gone! They have been gone for a few weeks now but I didn't want to celebrate in case they ventured back! Why did they all leave so abruptly? I'm not sure but I think a raccoon may have been involved. The scattering of feathers in the attic crawl space doesn't suggest a case of premature molting in fledgling pigeons. I would be more inclined to say that a severe case of trauma along with the demise of one juvenile and an undisclosed number of pigeon eggs was the real reason our birds became abrupt refugees.

In case you were wondering about the personal hygene of a flock of pigeons, or how much poop a pigeon poops in a year. Here is a picture of the balcony.



Can you say fertilizer?

To answer the earlier question about all the beadboard. It will be going here

A Shellacking Great Weekend!

If you think that all I do is neighborhood projects these days then you are mistaken. I spent the better part of three days, count them, one, two, three, shellacking a floor AND 35 pieces of 12 foot beadboard! After inhaling all those alcohol fumes from 1.5 gallons of clear shellac applied to the parlor floor to produce this;



I got to use another 2 quarts of amber shellac on these;



and these;



When that was all done, I got to put two coats of spar urethane on all this beadboard.

What is all the beadboard for? I'll elaborate in the next post. If you need a clue though, how about this "Got Pigeons?"

The Neighborhood Project

This is now 99.8% complete! After 3 weeks of non-activity I mustered up a few volunteers this Sunday to make the final push! There is a 4 foot section of lime green soffit to paint and the frame around the sign needs to be done. About 2 hours or less of work on a tall ladder. We are also having some period movie posters reproduced to slap over some of the gray areas. I'm sure his will be finished in the next two weeks! I'm sure that I will be the one on the ladder!



The total cost of materials was $260.00. Most of which was paint. I donated a bag of concrete, a bag of lime and half a bag of sand to the project but that adds only about $12.00 to the material cost. A local Home Depot was supposed to donate a $50.00 gift card but after 2 months of waiting for it we decided to proceed from our own account. I'm betting that we will still be waiting for it in July! In case you can't remember why we did this, here is a picture of how the building has looked since 1983.



Someone recently made a comment to me. He said that we don't have a right to live in a safe nice neighborhood, we have a responsibility. Therefore, don't go crying to the City everytime you want something fixed. The City would not have fixed this problem as good as we did. Let's face it, their employees are not creative enough, yet.

"The times, they are a changing....."

The Neighborhood Tour...

And the best thing is, I didn't have to write it! I found that someone linked to My Website through this post.

There is even a picture of the "Crackhouse".

There are a few errors. Our neighborhood boundries are bigger than depicted and some of the history isn't quite correct, but who cares unless you are living here and then again do you really care if you are reading this and do live here?

This Floor Really Sucks.....

Ok, so how many of you are thinking that this post is really about me screwing up the parlor floor and that is the only reason you clicked on this post? You should all realize by now that the odds of that happening are pretty slim these days. Ha! Fooled you all! What I am meaning to say is that this floor really sucks up the linseed oil!

This parlor room was added on to between 1887 and 1892 when Herman Volkenand bought the place and was Victorianising it to his liking before he moved into the house. To those whacky Volkenands, the solution was to put down new floor boards butted against the old ones. That was fine except that the old boards are ash and the new boards are yellow pine. When I perform my shellac magic on this floor, the ash boards will come out amber in color and if I am good, the pine boards will look like they do in this picture. They are the boards on the far half of the room. Otherwise, they will be very orange. I can always tint the shellac as a last resort.
This picture was taken tonight after the day was spent sanding the floor repairs and the baseboards. Then vacuuming, lots of vacuuming. This is how it looks after a coat of linseed oil/paint thinner mix and gives you an idea of how it will look when finished. It would be stupid to stain this floor because the difference in the woods would be more pronounced.




If you look carefully you can see my repairs. The big snafu was using a board from the second floor to repair a termite damaged board near the right window. When I did flooring repairs on this place a couple of years ago, I used boards from the second floor hall and bathroom to replace damaged or missing boards of similar width (the floor boards are not equal widths) on the first floor. All the wood was covered in shellac or crud so it wasn't until the floors got sanded that we noticed a distinct dark color on the second floor planks! In this room I only used the one board and it won't stand out when the floors are done so I won't have to paint it or mask it in any way. There are some repairs in the center of the room too. There used to be a big plywood square where a heating grate once rested and there were two electrical boxes in the floor when this building was apartments and there was a walk in/through closet in this room.
You can tell where the floor rug was! Actually, once we put a rug down you won't notice the wood floor. Your eyes will draw to the rug. We realized this when we put the rug down in our bedroom (the room above this one) where the difference in wood flooring is more noticable. Although it is kind of annoying to have the floor this way there is one great advantage. When sanding it I was able to start in the center and work towards the walls. This eliminates the ridge that forms about two feet from the wall where you put the sander down and start walking. I should have this floor finished by next weekend. Then I stop work on this room for a while and get to work on the laundry room and put a beadboard ceiling on the balcony. Oh lucky me......


P.S. Did you notice that the grafitti is gone? Three coats of Killz couldn't thwart it. It took a coat of shellac to entomb it forever in the walls! Now I have to hide the shellac marks and one coat of Killz hasn't quite done it.....