On November 6, 2006 I played in a composition major's recital. He wrote a musical loosely based on the folk song 'Oh My Darlin' Clementine'. He did a really great job with it, the performance went smoothly, and the audience seemed to love it. All in all, (except for the 9:30 pm rehearsals) it was a lot of fun.
Since it was a show, to round it off, he made a few pieces of scenery for it. One of the things was the front of a saloon, since it was a western, after all. Side note: the pit was jealous that the 4 person cast got to wear western costumes, so we also dressed up in flannel, jeans, straw hats and bandanas, which was obviously awesome.
As we were breaking down the stage after the show, I asked the composer what he was going to do with the saloon prop. He said nothing... Just break it down and throw it away. That seemed like a terrible waste to me, so I mentioned that it would look good in my apartment. He took the hint and said I could have it if I really wanted it. And so I took it apart, piled it together, and carried it down to the college Flats.
That's right, it has swinging doors.
After encountering significantly more trouble than i had anticipated, I finally managed to get it mostly assembled. (it would have gone a lot faster with two people, one holding it up and the other duct taping it, but I wanted to get it up before my roommate got back... He played in the show as well, so he knew what it was, but he didn't know that I took it.)
I discovered that I didn't have the pieces in quite the right places, and as a result, the sign was off-center. I got creative and managed to make it look centered, which then required the letters to be rearranged.
The finished product. Somewhere around this point is when I realized that when I said it would look good in my apartment, I neglected to consider where it would look good. I wanted to still be able to go thru the swinging doors, since that's roughly 90% of what makes it cool. But I was learning that it was a lot bigger than it looked on stage (it almost touches the ceiling) so the places where it would fit and still be usable were very limited.
Obviously, the only logical choice was in front of the door to the bathroom, so there it stands. We'll see how long it takes before we get sick of it and tear it down.
It stayed up for a few weeks. Sometime around the 20th it started to collapse. Duct tape doesn't stay stuck forever. After a while it starts to peel off, unless you keep re-sticking it. That was my job, and since I was gone for a few days, when I returned, the saloon had started down the steep, slippery slope to hopeless disrepair.
I didn't take any pictures of what I ultimately did to it, but in this picture, you can see all that survived.
