Dorrie Brooks of Jones Whitsett Architects reviews some of the color choices make for the new Colegrove Park Elementary School.

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee reviewed the final finishes and paint colors for Colegrove Park Elementary School.

But the some of the renovations at the former Conte Middle School are slipping behind schedule.

Dorrie Brooks of Jones Whitsett Architects walked the committee on Monday night through the proposed color schemes of each floor in the building.

"I know that we are getting close to a major milestone because I am going through the school now on a wall-by-wall basis and … adjusting to what's there versus what was in the drawing," Brooks said. "It is almost like sculpture now."

She said many colors will remain the same through the building and accents on the flooring, trim, and counters will create differences between each floor. She said the jumping off point for all the accents is the "earthy and warm" exterior color of the building.

"In general the whole approach is to draw from the exterior brick color into the school, which is this very warm brick, and use that as the base pallet and add accents," she said.

She said the ground floor will have a plum scheme and the main accent color will be a shade of purple.

The nature of the ground floor also allows for some creative decision like exposing brick that was uncovered during renovations.

"Since the ground floor is so different, we are trying to go with the character of it, and we discovered actually rather than painting it an opaque white, we should try to save that brick for what it is," she said. "It looks beautiful and has this interesting distressed quality."

She said this is being done through other parts of the building such as revealing the exterior of the old Drury Academy wall, or using tile in the bathroom that is historically accurate.

"It's such an opportunity at this school," Brooks said. "We want to preserve those moments more than anything so that the kids in that school will really feel the history and appreciate it."

Brooks said the first floor will have a rust scheme. She said a more subdued rust-colored carpet will be used in the classrooms than in the administration rooms.

All the walls will be a creamy white that will make best use of natural light.

"We have to have a fairly bright white on the classroom walls because you want to use daylight as much as possible," Brooks said. "You don't want to take the color down because then you are just amping up your artificial light."

She said they are also experimenting with "self-healing tackable wall paper" in some of the classrooms that would allow teachers to post things on the wall without damaging the wall's surface.

Th second floor will have a blue scheme, the third floor, a moss green scheme, and the gym will be forest green and cream colored.

"We are trying to look pretty earthy in general, and I am really excited about it," she said. "I think it is all looking beautiful."

She said the next big step will be for the committee to go to a furniture fair to pick out specific furniture for each floor.

Daniel Daisy, representing owner's project manager Strategic Building Solutions, said because of the cold weather and other unforeseen problems in construction, over the past week a lot of tasks began falling behind schedule.   

"Over the past several weeks, a lot of the non-critical tasks have gone up to further dates and are becoming border line critical, where almost everything is becoming critical in the building," Daisy said.

Still looking to complete the project by the original July deadline, Daisy said he has contacted the contractor requesting a recovery schedule.

He said this type of communication has been going on throughout the process and they need to see what explanations are legitimate and which ones aren't.

The School Building Committee was told some aspects of the project are falling behind after weeks of brutal cold.

"This is a constant battle and somethings are legitimate and unforeseen that the contractor couldn't accommodate for … each challenge is its, which would have to be evaluated," he said. "Whenever things take the critical path, there is really no wiggle room and we have used up almost all of our wiggle room this winter."

Like any construction project, unforeseen problems arise and they don't want to sacrifice quality, he said.

"What we don't want is to sacrifice the quality of what we are doing just to make a date," Daisy said. "We don't want to rush things and be fixing problems for two or three years down the line."

Brooks said they had to predict much of the structural conditions in the building and after opening up walls and floors they found what they anticipated was not the case. She said this also slowed down the process.

"To update this school to today's requirements seismically and structurally means adding steel beams as if you were building a new school," she said. "A lot of that was predicated on things that were assumed based on what research we could do, but we have opened up ceilings and found a beam was presumed to be there wasn't there."

She said because the building is made out of masonry the process isn't as simple as "welding and bolting it back together."

Daisy said the project is still financially on target and updated the committee on the project itself.

He said interior masonry is continuing throughout the building and is almost complete on the ground floor. Exterior work, plumbing and electrical are continuing. The new copper caps should be put on the top of the building soon. The wood-frame gym floor is almost complete and mechanical and duct work is continuing through the building.

The committee will have a walk through of the site at 3 p.m. on March 27. 

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