Copyright © 2021 by Wendy Waszut-Barrett
Sunday was my final day of work at the Brown Grand Theatre in Concordia, Kansas. Over the course of seven days cleaned, repaired, consolidated loose paint, in painted, reinforced the seams, and replaced the entire top of the drop curtain with new fabric and batten. I also cleaned, consolidated loose painted, and repaired the matching grand border. Initially, this project was a pretty straightforward repair and touch-up job that was going to take five full days. However, it morphed into a “replace the entire top of the drop curtain and reinforce the seams.” It tacked on an extra two days to the project, so was my last chance to finish everything last night before I left town today. Concordia is a nine-hour drive from my home in Minnesota.
Constructed a PVC roller for the bottom of the drop; this will solely to help reposition the piece for hanging. An extremely thick layer of original primer and paint makes the composition extremely fragile and subject to cracking. All that was available was available for a quick roller was ten-foot sections of 4” PVC. We purchased four sections and five connectors. The last two connectors were added to the ends, as it lifts the tubes up, and the fabric is able to adjust during the rolling, preventing wrinkles that sometimes occur.
I positioned the assembled roller and did a dry run to make sure it would work. I wanted to verify that the paint didn’t crack when being wrapped around the diameter. Rolling would occur Monday morning, as it has been extremely humid and I wanted to make sure that everything was really dry.
My next task was to attach the new top batten, made by local theatre volunteer Royce. The battens were beautiful. As the drop is out of square, I referenced painted detail (bottom of the frame). Just as they used to attach battens: I started out with nailing the back of the batten to the stage floor. This keeps the boards straight and in position as I attached fabric. I was also able to work out a few warps this way too. Then I attached the top of the fabric to the back batten, stapling every six inches; no, there were no tacks available. I placed the front batten, sandwiching the fabric, with screws every foot, staggered. After everything was all set, I pried up the top batten and hammered over the nails. Voila! It was all set to go. The holes for suspension will be drilled when it is hung next Friday.
I then returned to both in-painting and paint consolidation on the drop curtain. I worked on the drop until there were too many wet areas and then shifted to the grand border – about 2PM. After cleaning the piece, I patched and replaced a missing grommet at the top. Then I was able to focus my attention on both the green drapes for the drop curtain and grand border.
I finished up at 7PM and headed back to my hotel for the Board Meeting via. Zoom. I created a power point to show details of the work that occurred over the week and answered questions. The daily posts of this project were primarily for the Board of Directors to follow the progress, without stopping by during the day.
This morning after checking out of my hotel, I stop by the theater, roll the drop, load up my supplies and head home. On my way home, I am stopping by the Blair Theatre in Bellville, Kansas to see their 1928 theater; Belleville is due north of Concordia.
