Making Construction Errors Remarkable - Episode 2

I've had the opportunity to meet more than my share of celebrities. Though Hollywood types don't impress me much, I gush a little when I meet a great architect.  I think it might be because of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.  Or maybe it's just because I love great design and know how hard it would be to bring a great building completely into existence.  In any event when I have had opportunities to meet my personal heroes of design, I really got keyed up.

Most recently, my path has crossed with the work of Dick Clark Architecture.  His client, Jon Luce, builds some of the finest custom homes in Austin, and for his Hill Country Retreat, the design is minimal, honest, and just excellent.  I really don't know how to put into words the economy of space and how well the land is showcased. (Language fails there:  It's like trying to describe what a mushroom tastes like.)  But if one has even a modicum of sense of aesthetic, walking through the bones of this house is just delightful.

Problem is, the house was to have sealed concrete flooring, and the slab turned out really bad.  Often we score grids or patterns into floors using saws with diamond blades, but this one could've been cut with a pocket knife!  Crappy weather and who-knows-what-else made for a slab that wore like it was made of gypsum.  When I looked at it for the first time, I really didn't see a clear way to fix it.  An overlay here would've been a bit wrong as the rawness of the land and elegance of the design would abhor a veneer of any sort.  Grinding seemed risky as sometimes a poor piece of concrete will just disintegrate beneath our equipment and burn up a lot of diamond tooling in the process.  I just didn't see a clear means to create value.

To humor Jon, I showed up on a cold, rainy, Friday morning expecting to grind a sample for a set price, pack-up and go.  The sample seemed better than the floor that hadn't been ground, but I wasn't sold.  The more I talked to Jon, the more I realized that we really had to roll the dice and go for it, though.  We came up with a strategy of multiple passes with a 150 grit metal bond diamonds and a methyl-methacrylate sealer with a matte finish additive to sort of glue the slab together. 8 hours and 240 gallons of water-turned-slurry later, we surprisingly had a really neat looking floor.  Though we ran out of diamonds and pads for our scrubber, the outcome is clear now, and I am STOKED.  The floor is rough in spots, and it couldn't be re-created on a bet, but somehow it's just right.  It is perfectly imperfect.  It is the bridge between the rustic site and the modern lines of the home.  It is the serendipity that makes element7concrete floors worthwhile.

Check out the architects renderings on JonLuceBuilder.com:
 http://www.jonlucebuilder.com/current-projects/
Check out Dick Clark Architecture's site to see why I'm so thankful to work on one of his projects:
http://www.dcarch.com/
Then, check out of your internet browser and go make something!
Thanks for reading.

Making construction errors remarkable

A customer of mine (an architect from Brazil), reminded me recently of how concrete flooring is an element of "honest architecture".  Sure, some decorative concrete contractors base their businesses on faux rocks of all sorts, but the real point to working as hard as we do is to make something timeless and simple.

Therein lies the rub. The foundation is never perfect.  The other trades working on it aren't either. Plumbers miss the mark and have to cut trenches in the slab. Framers oil their nail guns right in the entryway and inadvertently apply an irremovable "resist" to acid stain. A family of raccoons pissed away the lime in the concrete and ran through it (literally: this has happened on a floor we stained) leaving ghost puddles of white in the dark walnut floor. The point is, these mishaps can ruin the project, or make it the coolest part of the house.

I guess if I have one story to tell here, it ought to be the raccoon-pee story.  After wet-scrubbing/honing the slab, it looked great and we turned around and stained it the same day. The next day when we came to rinse residue, there were puddles and tracks throughout. What we did, was design and saw-cut a pattern of golden rectangles, sectors of circles, and other such shapes that minimally complemented the architecture of the house in the places with the puddles and tracks and to balance. Then, we ground away the concrete within the shapes, exposing the stones and polished it as shiny ass possible (3000 grit) while the rest of the floor was at about 150. We used a solvent based dye to penetrate and color the concrete without regard to the lime content. The end result was a rough-and-dusty-half-day for my team and I, a really cool floor, a very happy customer, and a builder who became a raving fan of element7concrete.

So, the take-away is study the geometry and rhythm of good design and be a pro. When things go wrong (I promise they will) use the opportunity to make it better than you could have without the "inspiration of Nature".  At the risk of sounding weird, I urge you to know that Nature is for you (not against you) and if you dance with it through the process everything will work out for the best.  Go make something today!

Why do you do it?

I once heard that people ask kids what they want to do when they grow up because they are looking for ideas. Have you ever asked yourself where your work fits into the grand scheme of things? I'll tell you here what we are all about, and I would love for you to post a comment as to what you are all about.

Good design tickles my sense of aesthetic, but what I really love about it is how it serves the greater good. Housing is a basic human need, and the need to meet it sustainably builds every year. The most important aspect of "Green Building" isn't VOC's, "carbon footprint" or LEED points. It is timeless design.

The remodeling construction market is purportedly 3 times the size of the new construction market, and I would be willing to bet most of those houses are functionally fine. But, they are ugly, dated and funky smelling. However, the oldest stained concrete project I know of is the Awahnee Hotel, and it looks as good as ever:

http://www.yosemitepark.com/Accommodations_TheAhwahnee_PhotoGallery.aspx

Moreover, stained concrete is the cleanest most serviceable type of flooring I know of. Even hardwood, though equally timeless, can collect "schmutz" through the gaps. So in my mind, the greatest gift I can give the world is to devise the ultimate concrete overlay that can be installed in older homes and ages as gracefully as a well placed slab of real concrete. This doesn't exist outside of my workshop yet, and I want to make sure it's everything it needs to be before I really roll it out. But that's what I am working on and why.

What are you up to? Is it what you were born to do? What would you do if you couldn't fail?

Why you are going crazy

This concept is most easily understood in the Physical, so we will start there. Have you or a friend ever had to wear a cast for a month or two? What happens to that part of the body? How weak do we physically get with just a few weeks of no movement? On the other hand, what would happen if you took in a steady stream of stimulants and just lifted weights or ran in the same way until your body broke down? Would you get stronger, or would you destroy yourself with that? Clearly, intervals of eustress and rest are what build and maintain us physically.

There are at least 4 dimensions to a Human Being: Physical, Mental, Social, and Spiritual.

Are the other dimensions somehow different? Have you ever "gotten rusty" at a mental skill? Personally, I can remember working my ass off for straight A's through three semesters of calculus, and right now I bet I could not solve the simplest story problem with those skills without a little refresher. On the flip side, how sharp do you feel after cramming? It seems that the brain naturally enforces a rest interval with sleep, but if we manipulate our body chemistry against that are we better off? (Meth-amphitimines anyone?) Of course not!

Without beating this horse further, the point is stress+intervals of rest = maintenance and growth. Problem is, we seldom intionally set ourselves up for eustress/recovery cycle in all dimensions. Who pushes their sense of empathy like a weightlifter doing squats? Who trains spiritually like a marathoner for a special event? Rare birds indeed.

So "What do you do when you get 'that 2 o'clock feeling'?"(5 hour energy commercial) - How about take a friggin' nap? Do you have emotional casts on? How badly have we atrophied spiritually? Now, your reading crap on the internet chops are probably solid: shut it down and GO!

Wake up and Piss Excellence

That title is cool is you are a Will Ferrel fan, and probably offensive if not. Sorry. I think it's awesome.

There are three easy strategies to wake up feeling great here. The most usable is first and the best is last. I'm not sure what a "Morning Person" is or if the occur naturally, but I am sure I was not born this way. Here's what works for me and please comment on what works for you below.

Assuming the two things after this don't happen (you passed out last night without planning today, your kids have to be to school soon, so forget about exercise, reading, or a quiet time), this works every time. Ask yourself great questions. Have a list of questions that focus you on the good things. For me it's:

What am I grateful for? - What can I look forward to today? - Who am I thankful for? How many unbroken bones do I have? How good does it feel to not have cancer right now? Who needs be to show up strong today? How can I make the most of what I have been given so far? How sweet is it to have ______ in my life?

The key here is taking some time when you are sharp to think of all the questions that work for you. I have to give the credit to Tony Robbins on this one: He said years ago that all thinking is asking yourself questions. I can't even evaluate that statement without proving it! Take control of that process straight away.

The best thing for me at least is to have my day all lined out the night prior. If you work independent and creatively or lead a small team like I do, deciding what to do (out of an impossibly long list of things that could be done today) is important work that must be done regularly. Do this when you are up and running well. Lay out your clothes the night prior. Have the coffee pot all set up on an automatic timer. Make sure anything special to be brought in is touching your keys or blocking your door. In short, set the morning up so the dopey version of you doesn't have to think too much and is happily reminded of the smart you that should take over in a few hours.

Finally, according to most of my heroes, in addition to knowing what you are going to do, waking up early enough to take some time to make yourself strong first is enormous. 30 minutes of cardio, a little mediation, reading scripture...whatever makes you the strongest can revolutionize your life if it is made into a daily ritual. When it really opens you up, and becomes as compulsory as showering or brushing teeth, things start to really change.

Now, go do something that really needs to be done!

Creating Value

There are two fundamental ways to go about our work. We can look at the market or our employers as something that value is extracted from, or a place where value is created. The default for most folks is value-extraction. The value creation paradigm works much better and is a lot more fun.

When my team shows up Monday they could do either. The tools, vehicles, customers waiting for us, and training all cost our company money and provides the opportunity for them to apply themselves. They can use their skills, strength and stamina to help make peoples homes or at least make homes nicer. Or, they could just try to earn a paycheck. The know that no matter what, if they work X amount of hours, I will write them a check for Y amount of money.

The problem with extracting value, is it sets up a game that isn't very fun. The employer is forced to devise ways to extract labor worth as much or more as the money the employee is extracting. It becomes an ugly tug of war for human effort.

When we adopt the mindset of creating value, everything gets lighter and fun. Giving feels good. Achieving feels good. Making customers light up is fun. Exceeding expectations is fun. Best of all, the money just rains in without having to pull and fight for it.

So, go forth and create some value! Use your mind, body, and all the information at your fingertips to do something for someone that makes their life better.