By Kevin Kirkland

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Most of the 1,500 exhibits at the Pittsburgh Home & Garden Show can be put up or taken down in a few hours. But there are a few that take a lot longer because of their size, complexity or fragility -- flowers don't normally bloom in late February, after all.

The PG Dream Design Center, Crawford Grill, Bidwell Training Center gardens and ASID Designer Showcase are all on that short list. Here's what it took to get the first two attractions ready. The other two will be featured next Saturday:

Crawford Grill

The real Crawford Grill still stands on Wylie Avenue in the Hill District, boarded up, silent, nothing to indicate it was once a mecca for jazz musicians from around the world. Its creative energy, however, has found a home on the second floor of the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, thanks to students from the High School for the Creative and Performing Arts.

Seven art students and two teachers spent about five hours this week immortalizing in chalk some of the musicians who performed at the Grill. Errol Garner, John Coltrane, Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington are there, as is Grill owner Gus Greenlee and Negro Leagues great Josh Gibson.

"It's a lot easier to get the proportions right on 81?2 by 11 inches," said sophomore Vincent Kelly of Lawrenceville as he rubbed out a trumpeter's arm for the third time.

Next to him, junior Karissa Phelps of the North Side drew waves of colorful music undulating from his trumpet and a piano drawn by senior Dana Laskowski of Highland Park. Drawing teacher Jacques Baynes stepped back to offer advice, then returned to sketching liquor bottles and martini glasses behind the bar with senior George Dykeman of Brookline. The other artists were Norman Keen of Carrick and Autumn Morgan and Julia Blume, both of Squirrel Hill.

Another set of CAPA students aim to capture the Grill's musical spirit with live concerts during the show. For the second year, jazz teacher and bassist Paul Thompson will bring the CAPA House Band to perform jazz standards (see schedule on Page ?). The student musicians are Leo Pellegrino, Jeremy Malvin, Anton DeFade, Bryan Persinger, Paul Keys, Gerald Homme, Miles Jackson, Alec Chapman, Roy de Klerk, George Heid, Gomeh Barak, Alex Soltesz, Terrance Young and Andre Brown.

PG Dream Design Center

Heartland Homes has sponsored Dream Homes at the show before. Working with 84 Lumber and contractor Adam Petrovich & Associates, the home builder has created full-scale houses built within the convention center. The result was a building that resembled a Heartland Homes model but wasn't quite as good as the real thing because of time and space limitations.

This year, the company focused on just the front of their new Craftsman model and got it exactly right -- it's nearly identical to the real model built last year in The Arbors at Willowbrook, a Heartland development in South Fayette. The facade has the same tapered columns, cast-stone foundation, Prairie-style windows and two types of siding, one with rustic cedar-like texture.

Much of the facade arrived from 84 Lumber as plywood panels that were assembled on site. It was finished by about noon Thursday and work began on the small front garden. In the space of about four hours, Post-Gazette staffers laid down a low wall of cast-concrete blocks and a circular bed of hardwood mulch, both provided by Home Depot. Shrubs and flowers followed, compliments of Home Depot and Proven Winners, a nationwide supplier of annuals and perennials. Behind the facade, Design Center sponsors Hillmon Appliance, Trane, Stickley Audi & Co. and Heartland finished their displays.

Hillmon created a small working kitchen for demonstrations of Miele's induction cooktop, convection steam oven and convection speed oven. Trane set up the components of a hybrid system that combines a 95-percent efficient gas furnace, heat pump and power humidifier to heat, cool and ventilate any size house.

Stickley Audi put together several seating areas and a dining room featuring furniture and accessories from its Mission, Traditional and other collections. Heartland's best display is the facade itself, but it also has information on its other models and developments.

Kevin Kirkland can be reached at kkirkland@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1978.