Week 2: The Community and Nostalgia

Community Benefits

Knox Heritage benefits the community by saving our Historic Architectural History. One good example of their efforts is the restoration of the Bijou Theater. The theater was once in a state of destruction and disrepair; now it has been restored and is being used by our community. The Theater provides a venue for school groups, concerts, and theatrical productions. Recently I attended an Opera performance located at the Bijou Theater.

The Knox Heritage Salvage Room provides architectural pieces for purchase. These pieces are used by Architects, Designers, Homeowners, and preservationist to restore or decorate their buildings and homes. Last week a Homeowner (with a 100 year old home) came to the Salvage Room to find a screen door for his home. The Salvage Room offers the opportunity to find authentic pieces that would otherwise be impossible to find. Historical items are also available for purchase at Nostalgia. This location reaches consumers that may not otherwise think of shopping at Knox Heritage.

This week’s overview:

Nostalgia Room BeforeThis week I designed 3D renderings of Nostalgia Room. The primary goals of the new Nostalgia room improvements is to more easily display spindles, and other wooden pieces, and create a system for displaying old windows. We also wanted to design a room that will stand out and draw visitors into our space. Also, since First Friday was that week, we wanted to do a general cleaning and reorganization before the First Friday activities. My design renderings will be implemented after the First Friday this month. It will take some time to complete this process. The photograph on the left is the Nostalgia room before. I will post pictures of it again after the design is complete.

What we did to prepare the Nostalgia room for first Friday is clean items that were to be moved from the Salvage Room to Nostalgia. Also, Beth sent me to the hardware store to research the best way to hang items on a CMU wall. We decided to use the drill fitted with a concrete drill bit by Tapcon. The next step was to use driver to install the anchor into the wall. I learned that this method is to be used in the block only, not the mortar.

I also received further training to work in the Salvage Room daily operations and technical procedures. They use an email sign up list named Mail Chimp and I learned how to import email lists into Mail Chimp for execute marketing programs.

Introduction:

Christina (Taken By Coleen O'Leary)This week I would like to introduce the other Salvage Room Intern. Her name is Christina Lulich and she is a 3^rd year Architecture student at University of Tennessee. Christina is from Gatlinburg and she started working in the Salvage Room in February. Her experience has been very beneficial to me. She also works at Hobby Lobby. Christina has a few favorite aspects of this Internship. The first one is that she gets to use her truck to transport architectural items. This week we moved a farmhouse kitchen cabinet with built in sink, windows, grates, and a large barrel. The second thing she enjoys is that she is beginning to build furniture from historical items. She can purchase the items in the Salvage Room, learn about their history, and repurpose them. Christina enjoys the historic items because of the history and character.

Comments

[MBR]

Glad to know there is another intern working with you. Having someone else to work with to accomplish goals together is more fun than doing the work by yourself. I wish I had known about the KH salvage booth in Nostalgia. My husband and I came to the First Friday event. We walked around, but I did not see the booth specifically by Knox Heritage. I will have to make a separate trip. Let me know if you will be working there on a daily basis. There was no air conditioning in the building on Friday, and if this the way it will be, working there is going to be a hot one!

The section dividers are quite helpful. Under "community benefits" and the telling of the history of KH, some dates would be helpful to know, the people who work in the organization that keep it going, and how KH is actually organized. An organization chart would be helpful. It is a non-profit, and how is a non-profit different from other types of businesses? Do they have a board of directors they have to answer to? What other organizations do they partner with regularly to accomplish what they do? Also, what are the most current projects they are involved with?

The installation work you are doing with KH is an important skill to develop. Learning about the various construction materials in which you will be mounting various items is something that you will be doing from now on. Read Samantha's post on the installers needing to know various thicknesses of gypsum in the walls to be properly prepared for an upcoming installation. Details, details, details....

I look forward to seeing an "after" image of the Nostalgia room/booth. You may be working with historic preservation, but you are gaining retail experience as well! Please include an address for the new Nostalgia location -- it use to be located in Bearden on Homberg Place. Also, give a full description of what Nostalgia is -- I would be interested in who actually owns it, how long they've been in Knoxville, etc.

Stay cool -- it's going to be a hot, muggy week!