If there are flamingos on 11th St. NW, it must be summer (Photo: TBD Staff)

The stretch of 11th Street NW that runs through Shaw is already unique compared to the rest of the neighborhood. Zoning rules allow a number of the street's modest rowhouses to double as home-based businesses, giving way to a patchwork of beauty salons, locksmiths, and legal practices mixed right in alongside purely residential addresses.

Halfway between T and S, a small brass plaque fastened below a porch light is the only indication that a notary public can be found within. Another block down and across the street, etched lettering on a front-facing window reminds you that Dr. William G. Lofton, Jr., now retired, once practiced behind these red bricks, just as his father did before him.

And then there's the guy with the flamingos.

Take a stroll down the 1700 block, and you can't miss them. A trio of perky, cutout pink flamingos on wooden stands greet passersby every summer. In the fall, it's a pair of jaunty sheep. And once winter rolls around, a moody blue velvet curtain hangs starkly behind a vintage chandelier.

There's no shortage of chandelier options at 1733 11th St. NW, as it turns out: David Toran, the longtime Shaw resident who's behind the colorful displays, runs a chandelier repair and restoration company out of the house.

 Toran, 65, began constructing his whimsical window exhibits 11 years ago, when he and his daughter, Lily Kardell, now 17, first moved into their classic federal-style rowhouse. He took one look at the large bay window in the living room and saw an opportunity to start a creative family tradition.

More inspiration came from the curriculum at Lily’s private school, the Washington Waldorf School in Bethesda, which follows a holistic system of education that stresses a strong hands-on arts component. From a young age at WWS, Kardell was learning how to knit, weave, paint, and woodwork, so a craft project she and her dad could work on together four or five times a year seemed to make sense. The school also makes a point of recognizing seasonal traditions, an emphasis that found a handy platform in Toran’s front window. "Eventually, I realized that I had chandeliers that I could use seasonally," explains Toran.

The fixture he plans to hang next spring, for example, has little buds and floral patterns throughout its design (Toran isn’t yet sure what else will adorn the spring window next year, but previous years have featured a pair of donkeys).  And the fall chandelier features glass apples and grapes, resembling a miniature, sparkling harvest.

Through his company, Chandelier Services, Toran has earned a reputation as a master chandelier craftsman, able to restore severely damaged pieces to their full, Victorian-era glory. It’s a painstaking process that must be done slowly, deliberatively, and completely by hand.

"I’ve found there’s a tremendous amount of gratification in restoration work," says Toran. "I’m lucky that I find repetitive tasks very meditative."

He got his start in the chandelier business in Philadelphia, when he was still in high school. Back then, Toran worked part-time for his father, a factory rep for a lighting fixture manufacturer and importer, and soon learned the rare skill of being able to assemble and install chandeliers.

A series of careers later, Toran came to D.C. in the late 1980s as a locomotive engineer for Amtrak, and then later worked at Maurice Electric in Rockville. It was there that he got back in touch with his childhood trade of working with chandeliers — Toran’s father had actually worked with the electrical distributor decades earlier as part of his sales territory, so the company had access to a client list that Toran would eventually be able to mine in order to get Chandelier Services off the ground.

"What’s happening now is I am servicing chandeliers that my father sold 50 years ago," he says.

And so too is Kardell. She’s been her father’s apprentice for years now, and spends part of every summer learning more about the trade with another master craftsman in West Virginia. Toran estimates his daughter is one of only a handful of people in the United States who can take apart and re-install a chandelier all by themselves, and certainly the only one her age.

Even as she prepares to enter her senior year in high school and all that comes after, Kardell still enjoys changing the window displays every few months with her dad.

"It's a little bit like putting the Christmas tree up every year," she says.

The flamingos, along with their accompanying frosted pink chandelier, will remain until fall, when it’ll be replaced by a more seasonally appropriate scene. It’s a ritual to which Toran’s neighbors have grown accustomed.

"It used to be he would just put chandeliers in," explains Steve Davis, who has lived next door with his wife for the last eight years. "But we had a baby shower a few years ago, and our guests were going to the wrong door. I guess they didn’t know the difference between a stork and a flamingo."

That’s not quite as bad as the reaction Toran got to the very first summer display he ever did, which ended up being a bit of a disaster. Kardell had a lamp in her bedroom that was shaped to look just like an ice cream cone, so Toran thought he’d try it out in the window. But that turned out to be pretty confusing for his neighbors.

"The doorbell started ringing. People thought we were an ice cream store," Toran explained. "So we took it out."