HISTORIC VALENTOWN MUSEUM / VICTOR HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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Historic Valentown Museum

The "Save Our Siding!" Fundraiser continues

WHY THE FUNDRAISER? The original wood siding on the Museum is century old barn wood over 135 years old! It is in serious need of repairs. In some places, birds are even getting into the Museum through holes in the siding! Oh, NO!

The state of our siding is creating a destructive situation endangering the building itself and all of its contents. Our siding is the most important element to keep the building standing. The repairs are going to be costly and our desire is to match the existing siding as closely as possible. We would prefer to locate and purchase re-purposed barn wood in keeping with our recycling values. Costs for siding repairs must cover the siding & contractors, plus the 4-5 story very tall scaffolding that will be necessary.

The property is 100% run and maintained by unpaid volunteer staff who lovingly dedicate their personal time and labor. The museum is not supported financially by any local municipality. All of our funding relies on the generosity of donors, our members, the occasional grant, volunteer contributions, and tour fees and tips collected from visitors.

Please consider donating to help us preserve this authentic and irreplaceable peace of local New York history for generations to come!

Donations are being accepted as follows:

1) Through our GoFundMe page at GoFundMe.com/save-our-siding-sos

2) Through our own PayPal Save Our Siding donation button located here:
http://historicvalentownmuseum.org/page.php/Donations
Note that a PayPal donation has lesser processing fees than GoFundMe, so more of what you donate is received by us. You do not need a PayPal account to donate. Paypal accepts most (if not all) major credit cards.

3) Through a check or money order made out to "Victor Historical Society" and mailed to:

We look forward to your visit and support!

The following images are only a couple
of the many areas that need repaired / restored.
Please consider donating to our SOS ("Save our Siding") fund.


9_siding2.jpeg

7_sidingdamage.jpg

Notice in the photo below all the grayish patches? Those are areas where wire has been affixed to the siding to discourage the birds trying to house in the building!
31206306_1531252312534646_r.jpeg

 

 


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Registered:: 08/14/17
Posts: 199
Location: Penfield, New York
By: (offline)    

Submitted by Frank Kosmerl: Got an email from Frank, our board member who is diligently working on finding siding alternatives to re-purposed barn wood. He has this to say: "I just came back from a meet with Jim Dayton of Dayton Enterprises (formerly Victor roofing & siding).

I went over the idea of doing spot repairing of the siding on the Hall. My first rough estimate of repairs needed came up with about 300 lf. of siding.

He will contact me after getting quotes from mill operators snf other needed suppliers. I will be going down to Penn Yan on Wednesday to visit the mill where Will had the siding repairs done on the west and south walls some years ago. I expect that Martin's mill can get us cyprus, the same that was done before. Jim can get ceder, which is appropriate for our building but right now is very expensive after some British Columbia mills closed down. Jim will let us decide the source for the job.

He expects the safe way to do the west side (back) and south side is to erect scaffolding. That is labor intensive. When we get that up, we might want to consider doing all that we might benefit from as long as the scaffolding is already up.

I also discussed the idea of painting the new siding with a special weathered wood siding paint, that I saw in an 1810 building near Cohocton. It is dark brown, and would be similar in color to the dark color of the old siding. This might also be done when the scaffolding is up.

Lots of options to consider, and I hope our gofundme finds some funds." Help spread the word!


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Frank has ordered siding from Lamar Martin in Pen Yan, which will take from 2 to 4 weeks to complete, depending on a maintenance shutdown of the mill. Plans to install it are still in the works and still need funding! Please continue to share and support?

Also, on another lighter topic of good news...

The Town Code Inspector came today to see the Hall.

The final result was that it is in good shape. We found one night light needing battery replacements, and they will mention the missing siding, realizing that we have plans to fix those in the near future.

To those who have donated (and those who might)- on our web site donation page we promise to send a patch to donations over $5. But GoFundMe no longer allows "donation rewards" directly through their venue due to privacy concerns. SO .. if you have already donated, or will donate, and would like our 2018 custom patch, please contact me directly via me (webmaster@historicvalentownmuseum.org) and include your mailing address and we will send you the patch (while supplies last). We promise your information will be kept private and not used by us for any other purpose and we will never share or sell that info.

Thanks again for your support, and we hope to see you again at Valentown, we have some new activities coming up!

Lynne (and all of us at Valentown)


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We have the siding, now we just have to get it up there! We put a newly milled board on the back of the building last Sunday to show what they look like. We could do some more new, lower boards with a little help. Hint, Hint! Moving along slowly, but we're doing the best with what we got, progress doesn't always happen in leaps and bounds. Please consider sharing our fundraiser... or join us for some FUNdraising events we have going on in September!

Help spread the word!


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SAVE OUR SIDING NEWS - PROGRESS UPDATE ~~ as reported by Frank Kosmerl

Carl [May] and I went down today (Thursday,Sept. 19th) and picked up the freshly milled siding for the Hall, and it is now stored in the basement. I plan to pick up some dark brown stain and work on some pieces to get ready for some installations soon.

Here is a pick of the milling of our siding. They were just finishing it up when Carl and I arrived.

The milling machine was brand new at High Profiles Millworks in Penn Yan, NY. The new machine was just delivered about two weeks ago and they had to rent a large generator because the power company was late in getting their 400 amp electric service connected.

There were about 23 pieces totaling 300 feet. It is Cyprus wood, which has a very nice grain to it. The distributor was in Massachusetts and the wood was from the southern states.

The bill was $870 and we could use a bit more contributions to cover it completely.

(Lynne's Note: Although we now have the siding in our possession, there is still much to be done. The siding need to be stained to match the old siding, the old damaged siding must come down and the new siding put up. Contributions toward our siding fund are still being gratefully accepted at our GoFundMe campaign ( https://www.gofundme.com/save-our-siding-sos) or our own web site's SOS-Save Our Siding page. We continue to be grateful for your support and interest!)


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Repairs were started on the back of the hall were the ladder could reach. This week some gaping holes have been patched, and today we met with an architect to discuss major repairs, structural support, and long term lasting solutions. We thank you for your continued interest and support, we still have a long way to go... but we're getting there, one small step at a time!


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Wednesday, October 3: The biggest hole is repaired! This is the hole that got started by a wind storm and then was enlarged by an opportunistic racoon.


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UPDATES FROM FRANK:

October 8th: Carl and I just got home from another siding jamboree at the Hall.

We started at the squirrel holes at the northeast corner. I found a bunch of paper stuffed in there that was used as nesting for the critters and pulled it out.

When I looked again when they were on the ground, I found a note of numbers that I believe was from the carpenters who built the Hall!! We looked over other paper and found a letter, receipts from 1904 and 1907, some poster on purple paper. I picked up most of those little pieces because something might be learned by piecing it back together like a jig saw puzzle. Fun stuff.

The two ladies that stopped by yesterday were nieces of Sheldon.

October 19th: Yesterday, Carl and I completed siding repairs that we though essential for this fall. There are still some high up siding holes, that we may or may not get to next year. Another relatively warm day in the next 10 days or so might tempt us out again for some quick fixes. A rough count includes 47 siding repairs on the west, east and south sides, and 9 brown tin flashing covers over bird holes. There is more to go; but I think that a major part of the deficiencies are completed. And we have 7 of the 23 original siding lengths remaining to do more, with negligible waste.

Another piece of good news is that while I was looking into the holes up close, I saw no wet conditions behind the siding. This has been a concern of mine for over 15 years. The consequence of wet conditions that did not dry quickly is the possibility of rotting structural wood. I saw no evidence of that at all. The explanation I believe is that the wide roof overhang has protected most of it from rain intrusion, and if some water did get in, it was minor and the open nature of the siding allowed quick drying once the sun came out after rainstorms. Also, it looks like all the wood in the building is extremely durable cedar wood.

The other bonus to looking in the holes was the old paperwork I found packed into one stud cavity - for later investigation.

We are very grateful to Lynne for hosting the Riding for Siding fundraiser and the GoFundMe website, which has paid for most of the material cost. And of course the help of Carl, who has risen to the call for help at every request.


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At the end of September 2018 we scheduled a meeting with a company south of Syracuse who has hometown start up roots. Just what we like. Woodford Brothers had humble beginnings that have grown and expanded over the years and they are still family run. This was the first exploration for us in investigating the cost of making the needed repairs to Historic Valentown Hall.

And the final quote for the repair/replacement for the siding at Valentown is:

................(drum roll)...............

$95,392.14

This estimate needs to be adjusted as they quoted us for 4 sides and the northern side of the building does not need replacement. The price does not include the actual wood which we hope to provide from another source who has our template. We did contact a local company in the area also and initially heard from them, but afterwards they never replied to our request for an estimate. If anyone knows of another possible resource in the up-state area please let us know!


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