Lake In The Hills Historical Society’s Ford School Renovation

School Days are back upon us, and what a better time than to talk about an old school (ca.1886) that was brought back home this past June.

The Lake In The Hills Historical Society and it has been almost two months since it was relocated back to its original location.  I thought I would give an update as to what has been going on.

Once the school was moved to the park it sat on what they call “cribbing” until the foundation was poured.  Once the foundation had cured, the steel beams were taken out and the school was lowered onto its foundation.

We were then able to get inside the school and start the actual restoration. Inner walls were taken down, there was carpeting on the walls, and once that was removed, and the drywall removed we found that some of the original bead board was underneath all of that.

Thank you to Allied Waste / Republic Services for donating a huge dumpster for the Historical Society to use. We certainly filled that up in no time.

After the walls and ceiling were removed, we discovered that there were actually three large windows on each side of the school. Since the previous owners had taken one of the windows out and had added a porch to the building, the Society has decided to go ahead and put the windows back to the original state.

We are now in the process of stripping the paint from some of the windows and repairing the original wood. We found underneath the white paint was a dark green paint just around the window sash’s. Looking at some of the old photos we realized that yes indeed there was a dark paint on the original windows. Amazing how long that paint lasted!

There have been some wonderful donations made to the Historical Society and I would like to take this time to thank them.

The Society has received many old school desk from one of the schools’ neighbors Bill Rieke, Thank you Bill. Thank you to Webster Electric out of Des Plains for their donation of the underground wire we will need to bring electricity into the school. This was a big savings for the Historical Society and for that we are grateful. And for getting all of the grading and backfilling done, we thank Ken Ebel for his services. Ken Ebel is a relative of one of the former students who attended one of the last classes to be held in the school.

Please watch this space for more updates, and for fundraising events which we will be holding as the renovations continue.

If you are interested in volunteering your time or wish to donate please visit our website at
http://www.lithhistory.org

We can also be found on FB https://www.facebook.com/FordSchoolLITH   and /or https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lake-in-the-Hills-Historical-Society