Lake Forest and Highland Park: Stone Floors, Concrete and the Vanity Everyone Notices
By Granite Heroes Team · 2026-09-04
From a large concrete floor given an industrial finish in Lake Forest to a Calacatta vanity in Highland Park, recent North Shore projects show how wide 'stone restoration' really is.
People hear "stone restoration" and picture a kitchen counter. On the North Shore the work is much more varied. Two towns we visit constantly, Lake Forest and Highland Park, illustrate the range. Lake Forest: concrete floors are stone work too One of our larger recent Lake Forest projects was a concrete floor restoration and staining with an industrial finish. Polished and stained concrete is done with the same diamond tooling and the same sequence of grits as natural stone — it just starts coarser and finishes with densifiers and guards instead of an impregnating sealer. The process: 1. Grind to open the surface and level any high spots 2. Progressive honing to the chosen sheen 3. Densifier to harden the surface 4. Stain applied and worked into the finish 5. Final polish and a protective guard The result is a floor that reads as a finished architectural surface rather than a slab, and it is far easier to maintain than a coating that will eventually peel. Lake Forest's older homes also give us a lot of stone entry floors and mudrooms — slate, limestone and marble — with decades of wear paths from the front door. These are honed flat to remove the traffic pattern, then finished to the homeowner's preference. Highland Park: the vanity everyone notices A recent Highland Park project was a Calacatta marble vanity restoration — the kind of piece that anchors a master bath and that guests always comment on. Years of skincare products, perfume and toothpaste had left it etched and d