GOVERNMENT

City of Topeka to offer free vinyl siding removal workshop

Tim Hrenchir
threnchir@cjonline.com
Former PBS TV show host Bob Yapp, who is shown here putting on a workshop last November for Topeka's city government, on Friday and Saturday will teach a free public vinyl siding removal workshop being sponsored by the city's planning department. [City of Topeka]

Former PBS TV show host Bob Yapp on Friday evening and during the day Saturday will teach a free public vinyl siding removal workshop being sponsored by the city of Topeka's planning department.

Molly Hadfield, media relations coordinator for Topeka's city government, said the workshop is important because it helps lay the ground-level work that is necessary for the city to establish an area as a Garlinghouse Show Homes National Historic District.

"We had this area surveyed in 2016, and it was recommended as a potential historic district," she said. "However, the survey documented there was too much vinyl siding for the collective district to qualify. That’s what this project seeks to fix. Over the next several years, we’ll remove the vinyl siding from a few homes until we reach that magic number where the district does qualify for nomination."

Hadfield said Yapp will make a presentation at 6:30 p.m. Friday in the Edgewood Park Shelter House near S.W. 2nd and The Drive about the fallacies of vinyl siding, and how owners can using paint to preserve their homes in better condition.

Beginning at 8 a.m. Saturday, Hadfield said, city employees and volunteers will gather at the Garlinghouse home at 216 S.W. The Drive to begin removing the building's vinyl siding to reveal its original wood siding beneath. Afterward, Yapp will explain proper finishing techniques to prep the underlying wood siding for paint.

Yapp was host from 1996 to 2001 of the weekly PBS TV program “About Your House with Bob Yapp.”

Since 2008, he has operated the Belvedere School for Historic Preservation in Hannibal, Mo., which teaches students to become artisans in the preservation trades.

Yapp is also president of Preservation Resources Inc., a historic preservation consulting firm. He has traveled across the nation more than 20 years providing historic preservation training and “learning by doing” workshops.