 Well, Greater Portland Landmarks is Portland's historic preservation, education, and advocacy organization. So it seems like a natural for us to do a show like the Old House Trade Show because that brings homeowners who are trying to work on their houses, trying to preserve their houses together with all the artisans and trades people and experts who could help them with their preservation projects. So it's a win-win for the community and for the homeowner. Well, Greater Portland Landmarks started the Old House Trade Show in the mid-90s and it really was about bringing the trades people together with the homeowners and getting that education process started and we did it for a number of years. We took a break in the starting about 2007 because we were very involved in buying a building for our own new headquarters and that was a very exciting for us and a preservation project that's important as well for the community. But we kept hearing from people that they really wanted to get that information to meet each other one-on-one, the trades with the property owners and so we thought let's get back to that, that's part of our core mission, let's get people back together with the people who can answer questions and help preserve our neighborhoods and towns and communities and buildings for everybody. I'm Les Fossil, I restore old houses, I've been doing it since 1975. We are headquartered in mid-coast Maine in Alna just north of Wiskasset and we work in a circle about an hour, hour and a half away so we go as far as Vinalhaven and Northhaven over to Standish down south of Portland but that's basically, should be a island, that's basically the circle we work. I think I'm the longest serving or suffering exhibitor in the place and why I come here is not so much for the public. I mean I love to talk to people but these are my buddies and for five years now there hasn't been an old house trade show and so we've got five years of catching up to do. The great thing is in Maine is a wonderful center for people who work on old buildings. There are so many older buildings in Maine, it's the oldest housing stock in the country, 70% of the buildings in Maine are 50 years old or older so there are plenty of buildings to work on and there are great trades and craftspeople in the state. But we also went out, we went out to other home shows, we went to New Hampshire, we researched people who work on older houses and we actually reached out to a large group of people to get them interested in being part of this show because we wanted a mix of people. We wanted masons and plaster repair people and timber frame people and all the different skill sets that people need to fix up their older buildings. We've really made an effort to reach out to people about energy efficiency and sustainability with older buildings because that's always a challenge, you know we're in a northern climate we have to deal with those long winters and there are special ways that for historic buildings or older buildings that you can get the most benefit for energy efficiency and also keep the wonderful character of your older building. If you're going to solve problems it requires time, money and skill and with any kind of complex problem and keeping a house warm is a complex problem it means you think about it before you start taking actions. What you start with is the fact that heat rises it's why people are called hotheads and have cold feet and so you get a good blanket of insulation above your head just like your mother told you to put a hat on same thing and then you go down my chart and you figure out where there's a return on investment because presumably you're doing these things because you want to save money. If you replace your windows you're almost certainly not going to save money unless they're rotting apart so you want to save money you want to keep the candles lit in the dining room table and you want to be good thing do things that are good for the environment and what we try to do is do one thing and have three good results and it's a little bit like if you buy antiques you buy them because they're beautiful you like to be surrounded by beautiful things you buy them because they're useful I mean you can sit on them you can eat your food on them they're useful and you buy them because they're a good value and in most cases you're wrong about one of the three but you're seldom wrong about all three and that's what we try to do with old houses we try to make things that are beautiful practical and good value. Landmarks has a program now called the preservation services program and we have a preservation services advisor on staff so his expertise is in old houses so if you have a problem or question or something that you need information about we can provide technical guidance or at least steer somebody in the right direction or help them start because as a homeowner new to old houses it's often just hard to know what what should I do first and that's part of part of the reason we're doing the show is we have 17 workshops to help people with those kinds of questions but also as people are working landmarks offers that technical guidance through our preservation services program so that people can get the answers or get steered in the right direction to answer that. The Old House trade show is a great way for all of us to meet each other and we just met for example with a young couple they've just bought an old house from the original owner it's a 19th century house they are so excited to get in there and start working on it and they're really looking for how do I start what are the best ways to approach this who can help me with that information so that's so exciting as well as people who like myself you know who are on the long-term plan can't do it all at once but but you're working over time to fix up your buildings and to keep that wonderful fabric that makes Bain and Portland such a great place to