Christopher L. Yerke – Restoration Workshop

general contractor, woodwork

Restoration Workshop is the creation of Christopher Yerke, a San Francisco based general contractor and woodworker with 20 years of trade and craft experience. Restoration Workshop was created to be a repository of rapidly disappearing, historical craft and construction knowledge. As such Restoration Workshop’s services include restoration and preservation project management, exceptional finish carpentry, fine custom furniture fabrication, preservation and landmarks consulting, and general remodeling. Restoration Workshop also maintains a “library” of highly figured domestic woods for use in fabrication of custom furnishings and restoration of buildings.

Mr. Yerke holds a BFA in metal smithing and sculpture from Southern Illinois University, as well as post graduate studies in music and foreign languages. His passion for art and architecture began as a boy in the Midwest, fascinated with Frank Lloyd Wright’s prairie style architecture and the collections at the Chicago Art Institute. He is an avid collector and user of historic woodworking tools as well as a constant student of historic construction and woodworking practice. Mr. Yerke’s vocabulary of construction experience is eclectic in the extreme, and thus he specializes in resourceful custom solutions to difficult construction challenges. The sensitive inclusion of modern infrastructure into historic settings without undo disturbance of the historic fabric is a particular specialty of his. Mr. Yerke won the California Preservation Foundation’s 2005 Preservation Design Awards for Craftsmanship for the exterior restoration of the Spencer House in San Francisco.

Restoration Workshop is passionately dedicated to preservation of historic resources and craft. They work well with architects and designers, but also offer design-build services when appropriate. It is their goal to build coalitions of the best design and trades people in order to achieve the highest quality result.