Braeside School

Braeside School - Highland, Park, Illinois - Restoring the Principal's Office.

While some more recent, insensitive and destructive exterior work was being done on the building (contracted by school superintendents, including the application of aluminum on all the wood fascia over the entire structure), I was contracted and allowed to work independently to do some interior historic restoration.

Kathy Ellis, the Principal and the Braeside School Beautification Committee sponsored by the PTO, contracted me to restore the old Teachers' Lounge, near the main entrance - which is now being used as the new Principal's Office.

The first task on this job was to remove the many coats of paint (including an epoxy coat) from the limestone fireplace and hearth. Once that was finished, we also restored the limestone hearth by taking out a large concrete patch and matching and installing new stone. Below: The fireplace after restoration.

Next, we did some restoration on the woodwork throughout the room. All the woodwork was originally Douglas fir and had been finished with a green stain. Due to budget constraints, we were not able to remove the paint from the wood, but prepared it and applied a faux finish to mimic the original. Some wood was missing and we replaced it and stained it to replicate the original. The new stained wood and the faux finish match very well.

We also rebuilt the missing mantelpiece over the fireplace based on the original blue-prints. This was also Douglas Fir, stained green.

When the fireplace and woodwork were done, we painted the walls and ceiling to match the color of the original buff-colored sand finish plaster. Color and paint expert, Bob Kieca again helped me out on this job and did a great job with all our color matching.

The last thing was to reinstall a maple floor. Maple floors were originally throughout the building, and most had been removed and replaced with plywood and industrial carpet. An orange shellac finish was then applied to match the original.

Ms. Ellis (pictured below) is very pleased with the whole job, and so am I. Now people can visit Braeside School and get a sense of what the entire building would have looked like originally.

Back to Contents