As many as 400 workers are swarming in and around the Utah State Capitol, doing everything from pouring concrete for a new underground parking garage to applying real gold to ornate wall trims.

"We're probably at the busiest of the busiest points we've been at on this job," said David Hart, executive director of the Capitol Preservation Board, which oversees the four-year, $200 million renovation project set for completion by the end of the year.

Already, the final piece of the complicated seismic retrofit has been put in place in the basement of the stately granite structure. Within a month, the weight of the 80,000-ton building will be shifted from unreinforced concrete columns to nearly 300 base isolators.

That portion of the project, intended to protect the nearly 100-year-old building from earthquakes through a system of supports that will act as shock absorbers in a tremor, won't ever be seen by the public.

Much of the work that's being done now, though, will be noticed by visitors once the building is reopened for an open house in November — such as the sea gulls that have reappeared on the ceiling of the rotunda after being obscured by decades of smoke and dirt.

Not only are the full 4 feet or so of the birds' wingspan clearly visible now from the floor of the rotunda, so are details of the historic paintings beneath the dome. The sharper images and brighter colors are due to a restorative cleaning, Hart said.

The pink-and-blue trim on the walls of the building's majestic lobby — not to mention the orange-painted wings on the carved griffins and the soon-to-be-replaced rams' heads that will sport even more unusual colors — mirror the original tones used to decorate the Capitol.

That's also why there will be purple silk lining the walls of the historic Gold Room next to the Governor's Office. The room, which Hart hopes will be well-used as a reception area by state officials, takes its name from the gold-leaf trim all along the walls and ceiling.

The walls aren't painted gold, though, but a sort of greenish yellow that's historically accurate, too, according Hart. Same with the mustard-yellow tones in the Attorney General's Office and the brown, leather-looking painted finish in the House.

It took scraping away decades of paint to find the original coloring for the building, Hart said, as well as extensive research that included buying old catalogs on eBay and examining black-and-white photographs to determine the lightness or darkness of a particular color.