Our Services

Skill-building workshops covering everything from hands-on trades to preservation principles and approaches—designed for homeowners, tradespeople, and professionals.

Old School Workshops

On-site consultations tailored to your historic property—offering practical answers, industry best practices, expert insights, and clear direction for building care and repair.

Historic Building Check-Ups

Creative design solutions that respect a property's historic character while adapting it for modern, functional use.

Rejuvenations

Expert analysis of historic paints, finishes, and mortar, with custom contractor specification language to ensure new materials and techniques are appropriate and compatible.

Traditional Materials Analysis and SPecs

Detailed, visual, field-ready preservation plans that assess existing conditions and provide clear, prioritized treatment recommendations.

Preservation Maintenance and Repair Plans

Supporting cultural organizations with event planning, writing, and public outreach—celebrating heritage through stories, traditions, and community as well as place.

Event Planning, Writing, and Outreach

About

ABOUT US

ABOUT
OLD SCHOOL

Executing a preservation project can feel overwhelming. Between federal, state, and local preservation laws; building codes; and the alphabet soup of required reports and review bodies, building owners often don’t know where to start.

Old School Heritage Solutions is here to help. We customize our solutions to our client’s unique situation by finding the most expedient combination of tools needed to meet legal requirements, honor the building’s history, and serve the owner’s needs.

We aim to demystify the preservation process for our clients by laying out a clear path to reach project goals. In addition, through our Old School Workshops, we aim to address the preservation skills gap that makes finding trained craftspeople challenging.

About Me

Katherine Wonson,

Founder and Principal

It all started with an 1850s, one-room school house in rural New Jersey for Katherine. As a child, this local landmark captured her imagination and curiosity about historic places. Katherine shares her passion, knowledge, and curiosity with clients and learners so that they can find their own ‘old school.’

Her career has taken her from doing carpentry in the backcountry of Washington State, to project managing a roving preservation crew across the National Park System, to overseeing the rehabilitation of a historic dude ranch cum training center and its programming, to founding a nonprofit to protect some of the last intact remnants of historic downtown Jackson, WY.

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