Signdealz restored the old Foundry Marquee at 1109 Walnut St. in downtown Boulder CO during the remodel for Absinthe House There were significant structural issues as well as general astetics of the marquee that needed to be addressed.
During our initial evaluation of the marquee we look for basic structural integrity of the internal structure. The marquee had been built out of non industry standard components making restoration back to the exact specifications nearly impossible. This is often the case when dealing with a restoration of an old sign. Many components in signs built over 30 years ago no longer exist. From chasers to specific types and colors of neon glass, Signdealz has restored many landmark signs over the past 40 years and has the experience required to find the correct components or custom manufacture them to historic specifications.
I have included below some of the issues we had to overcome to get the Absinthe House Marquee completed.
Boulder Sign Permit Issues: The Absinthe House Marquee is located in the City of Boulder's historic preservation district.The City of Boulder maintains and regulates various aspects of construction and design in numerous historic districts throughout the city. Construction or significant alteration of any sign in this zone needs to have approval from the Historic Preservation Committee. You can find the City of Boulder Historical preservation guidelines at this link: Historical Preservation Guidelines and Application. Signdealz provides permitting services for various customers and other sign companies across the country looking to have work done in the City of Boulder.
The only way to circumvent this process is to restore the sign back to it's original condition, color, and use the original components as to present an identical visual representation of the original. For the Absinthe House Marquee we rebuilt all of the components of the marquee back to the original using completely custom fabricated components. We replaced the original letter track with the Marquee industry standard Gemini reader board track.
This track comes in stainless steel or aluminum, for our project we used aluminum to keep the cost down for the restoration. We replaced all of the acrylic panels with solid sheets of Lexan. Lexan provides superior durability and longevity vs. acrylic sheet. The color was identical to the original color used when the marquee was built. We replaced all of the existing bulbs to ensure the marquee would not require service for the next 5 to 7 years.
One of the things that really made this project rewarding is that we were able to finish this project within two weeks for our customer. He had hired another sign company who had been working on it for two months and lost a significant number of the components, making the process of restoring it back to orginal condition very difficult. However, in usual Signdealz style, we found a way to deliver a superior product to our customer and save the day!