About Oak Brothers
Servicing the Chicagoland Area for a Quarter of a Century
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” – William Morris
Jeff occasionally makes presentations at neighborhood historical society organizations. He has also made several webinar presentations for the Chicago Bungalow Association.
Jeff Ediger, the founder and owner of Oak Brothers Historic Restoration.
He received his introduction to craftsmanship while working for a third-generation Dutch house painter for several summers while attending graduate school. He became fascinated by the seemingly miraculous results that can be achieved by applying the time-tested principles and practices of an old-world craft. From the importance of good prep. work to the proper way to hold and load a paint brush to the reliability of methodically following incremental sequences–he learned that good craftsmanship yields results which seem to exceed the invested effort.
What surprised him just as much, though, is the role thoughtfulness plays in the work of craft. The experienced crafts person has what Stephen Nachmanovitch describes as “skill to burn.”[1] Working more like an improvisational musician than a rigid technician, he or she considers what is needful for the specific project at hand and applies just the right procedure and material to accomplish the task. Because he has “skill to burn,” he has many options to choose from. This, is how Jeff thinks about the essence of craft: “thoughtfulness in action, informed by time-tested skills and procedures, to accomplish beauty and purpose.”
After several summers, Jeff left Mejiur Painting and Decorating to establish his own part-time painting business while completing graduate studies . A premonition of things to come, he then landed in the Hyde Park neighborhood where he continued his (primarily interior) paint work, the distinction now being that most of the Hyde Park and Kenwood homes he worked in were at or nearing 100 years of age.
Meanwhile, given his love for beauty, he began taking courses in the decorative arts painting tradition at the Miller-Waganer School of the Decorative Arts and Windy City Studios. He soon began rendering decorative finishes, even then tending toward work within the architectural period context.
For instance, consider this stately Victorian foyer and stairwell. To create a “broken color” finish that created the impression of an aged Victorian wallpaper, Jeff mixed a gold metal glaze from bronze powders [2] and used it to apply the design on top of a “linen” base coat. A testimony to the aesthetic quality and durability of this finish, the client contacted him fourteen years later with a request to extend this same finish into the newly restored vestibule.
Having been sealed in a non-porous basecoat, the arch and corbels were washed with gold size onto which the same gold-toned bronze powder used to create the wall finish was pounced, then polished to a soft glow. An antique glaze was then applied to create the impression of an aged patina.
After several years spent restoring plaster walls and rendering both solid color and decorative arts painted finishes in vintage interiors, a job came along that would change the direction for Jeff’s work. He received a commission to restore three floors of the stairwell, including the wood trim, doors, windows, landings, and staircases–in this century-old Italianate mansion in Kenwood.
Go here to learn about the old-timer’s technique we used to patinate these stair treads.
Besides reverting the finish from paint to the original stained and varnished condition, the project involved making structural repairs and refurbishing/ repairing the hardware.
Since the job was too large to undertake by himself, Jeff hired his colleague, Art Perkins, to assist him. Art had been trained through the Smithsonian Institute in furniture restoration and had thirty years of experience under his belt. With Art as his mentor, Jeff received a crash course in architectural conservation, preservation, and restoration.
The year was 2001. Jeff and Art joined forces to form the company that Jeff would, several years later, carry forward as Oak Brothers Historic Restoration. Jeff has been directing the operations of Oak Brothers since then, having learned quickly how to hire workers more skilled than himself in specific areas while managing the workflow, project design, and client relations to develop aesthetically pleasing and structurally sound restoration projects.
About The Oak Brother’s Website
This website is more detailed than it needed to be if our only goal was to describe the services we offer. This choice was intentional, it being grounded in our belief that any business bears a responsibility to society at large to not merely sell products, but also to educate members of the community concerning the substance towards which their services are devoted. Not only does such understanding enable potential clients to make informed decisions about who they hire and what services they require, but it also enriches building owner’s appreciation for the value of their historic buildings. And helps them understand how to maintain the elements we assist them in restoring. It is also a demonstration of the care we devote to our work. Awareness of the complexity of relevant procedures helps potential clients understand why projects take the time they take to be done right, and why such work costs what it costs.
Here is what one client said concerning this approach to our work:
[1] Freeplay: The Art of Improvisation in Life and the Arts.
[2] Bronze powders are made from metal fragments ground almost as finely as talc powder, then electrostatically treated to produce a wide range of metalic patinas.