I was reminded again today of the value of working in rhythm. We human beings are truly designed to create at full throttle, then rest. Technology and marketing collude to short circuit this, as there is money to be made in grabbing attention, and the coolest tools are best fitted to this task. However, we are happiest and most effective when we are not at the effect of that.
Ironically, I am a bit of a fan of both technology and marketing. I guess I dig it because I value cleverness in general, and those are two arenas where cleverness is attracted and celebrated. Be on guard, though: we all celebrate Creation or ersatz creation.
A wise protestant once said something to the effect of "all sin is idolatry". If anyone can make a counterpoint, I will take you out to any extravagant-consumption-based date you can describe. (Idolators, as a group, like to consume the finer things of this world). I can't imagine what you have to say.
This is all true but frankly off topic. My point here is we are to crush it, then sleep. We are to give it all, then rest. When we do not do enough or do not rest enough or do not follow the rhythm of do/rest as dictated by Nature, we suffer. The world suffers. The ones we love feel the lack of our gifts. We owe it to ourselves, our best friends and families, and the world to "bring it". This cannot happen authentically unless we hide out when it is appropriate. Nor can it happen when we just reflect without boldness. It is time to step up or step away. Thank you.
Weekly musings re design, creating value, and living well.
Simple. Cool. Clean. Grey. Flooring.
1-unit loading grey - hardWear finish
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Against the grain.
About nine months ago, I may have spent an afternoon as the most annoying guy on house slab pour ever. A really neat couple in Llano,TX was building a ranch home with Sammy Lackey, a solid local builder there, and they wanted concrete floors. However, they were adamant that they not be slippery for their dogs' sake (the Bot 3000 COF meter is geared for something other than paw traction). The saw a picture in my portfolio of a floor we had done with a very rough, hand troweled finish (on the West Coast, I think they call it a sweat finish), and that looked just right to them. The concrete contractor, on the other hand, had never heard of such a thing. What's kind of funny is how "unusual things" go over in rural Texas.
Mike, the concrete contractor, is both very competent, and a good guy; we had worked on a handful of projects together, and I think we started with some mutual respect.
The cast of guys finishing that day was an all-star-team of sorts: Normally, (as racist as this may sound), there is a fat-ish white guy running the crew, and 3-10 Mexicans doing the actual work. Since the economy was slow, almost every "jefe" I had seen in Llano County was working on this job as a finisher. I don't know what the Mexicans were doing that day.
When I sent the pictures to Mike of the rough finish we were after, and talked to him about it, it was obvious that he wasn't really feeling it. So, I planned on coming out the day of the pour to teach a clinic on rough, random looking finishing. When I rolled up, the vibe was pretty tense. Without exaggerating, there was probably a century of experience finishing concrete between the guys there, and here I come with a bunch of worn-out pool trowels hanging from their handles in a carpenter's box in my truck. I was going to roll up in a detailed pickup and show these salty old dogs how to finish this slab? Right.
Two of the guys were acting extra friendly and interested, which indicates that the other 6 were talking crap about me and the Christian within these two was screaming inside about what's right and wrong when folks use there word in a negative way. Anyway, despite their best intentions, the notion of finishing concrete less than as smooth and tight as you know to do on a "house-slab" was going over like a fart at a funeral. Hand troweling when there were 3 perfectly good finishing machines on Mike's trailer was equally objectionable. Ultimately, the job got done, and we may have placed the world's first power-troweled sweat finish. The local concrete guys were pretty sure that I had ruined the project and that there was not a good chance that the floor was going to look like anything they wanted to be associated with. However, they knew that I wasn't an idiot or a charlatan, and were therefore curious as to what I was going to do with this terrible slab that I inspired.
Now frankly, when we came back to stain and finish out the floor, it looked rougher than I remember. The house was framed and dried in and so there was a ton of edge work that had to be done with hand held grinders. Two days, a couple of sets of diamond tooling and six grinders later, it was really cool looking. We left the pattern of the "finishing" intact, but we ground off an awful lot of concrete.
We got to finish it out in September, and even got to mimic their ranch brand in a Texas engraving on the front porch. I really can't wait to pop some Coors Light with the salty old concrete guys in Llano and get their candid opinion about what this project, because (now image this said with a heavy twang "That looks good-I don't care who you are".
Mike, the concrete contractor, is both very competent, and a good guy; we had worked on a handful of projects together, and I think we started with some mutual respect.
The cast of guys finishing that day was an all-star-team of sorts: Normally, (as racist as this may sound), there is a fat-ish white guy running the crew, and 3-10 Mexicans doing the actual work. Since the economy was slow, almost every "jefe" I had seen in Llano County was working on this job as a finisher. I don't know what the Mexicans were doing that day.
When I sent the pictures to Mike of the rough finish we were after, and talked to him about it, it was obvious that he wasn't really feeling it. So, I planned on coming out the day of the pour to teach a clinic on rough, random looking finishing. When I rolled up, the vibe was pretty tense. Without exaggerating, there was probably a century of experience finishing concrete between the guys there, and here I come with a bunch of worn-out pool trowels hanging from their handles in a carpenter's box in my truck. I was going to roll up in a detailed pickup and show these salty old dogs how to finish this slab? Right.
Two of the guys were acting extra friendly and interested, which indicates that the other 6 were talking crap about me and the Christian within these two was screaming inside about what's right and wrong when folks use there word in a negative way. Anyway, despite their best intentions, the notion of finishing concrete less than as smooth and tight as you know to do on a "house-slab" was going over like a fart at a funeral. Hand troweling when there were 3 perfectly good finishing machines on Mike's trailer was equally objectionable. Ultimately, the job got done, and we may have placed the world's first power-troweled sweat finish. The local concrete guys were pretty sure that I had ruined the project and that there was not a good chance that the floor was going to look like anything they wanted to be associated with. However, they knew that I wasn't an idiot or a charlatan, and were therefore curious as to what I was going to do with this terrible slab that I inspired.
Now frankly, when we came back to stain and finish out the floor, it looked rougher than I remember. The house was framed and dried in and so there was a ton of edge work that had to be done with hand held grinders. Two days, a couple of sets of diamond tooling and six grinders later, it was really cool looking. We left the pattern of the "finishing" intact, but we ground off an awful lot of concrete.
Friday, September 16, 2011
driven to dust
The scene:
What element7concrete is all about is taking a lowly material (concrete) and applying as much creativity and raw human energy (spirit) to it as possible. Sometimes it's researching materials and best practices, sometimes it's just vibrating a form thoroughly and hard troweling the slab. Though countertop fabrication is a tougher place to create value and fans of our company (our countertops are frankly expensive compared to our floors), having complete control allows for a better expression of this.
Yesterday, we found ourselves back out at Land Art on Hwy. 71 just west of Austin. We had transformed the old funky grey floor months ago, and now it was time to finish out the counter we had poured last week. Things came to a head though, when the sometimes dirty nature of our work ran against the efforts of the cleaning crew. They are nearly ready to open, and there we are ready to grind out our slurry, control fibers, and router our edges. It all came to a head around 11:00am when the owner had about had it. I was truly sorry for the noise and dust (turns out a $2000 Ermator S26 vacuum isn't completely effective when using handheld tools on vertical edges, etc). However, I am terribly thankful we were allowed to go on and add to the mess inherent in construction for the same reason I get up and do this everyday: We have a chance today to make something awesome.
The realization:
That's the whole point. Take your day, and even though your back hurts, your eyes are burning, and you are developing acne under your dust mask, MAKE SOMETHING AWESOME. All we ever have is this moment (I would like to have had two more days to make dust in Land Art to really do it like I'd like to) to do our best. If we relax until something awesome we can make comes to mind, and then doggedly work until it exists, we are pretty happy regardless of our physical conditions. As soon as we take our eyes off the prize, one point of discomfort after another will pop up until we are miserable. If you have a Bible and care to read it, check out Hebrews 12:2. There is a pretty good example of enduring what you don't want "for the glory set" before you.
What element7concrete is all about is taking a lowly material (concrete) and applying as much creativity and raw human energy (spirit) to it as possible. Sometimes it's researching materials and best practices, sometimes it's just vibrating a form thoroughly and hard troweling the slab. Though countertop fabrication is a tougher place to create value and fans of our company (our countertops are frankly expensive compared to our floors), having complete control allows for a better expression of this.
Yesterday, we found ourselves back out at Land Art on Hwy. 71 just west of Austin. We had transformed the old funky grey floor months ago, and now it was time to finish out the counter we had poured last week. Things came to a head though, when the sometimes dirty nature of our work ran against the efforts of the cleaning crew. They are nearly ready to open, and there we are ready to grind out our slurry, control fibers, and router our edges. It all came to a head around 11:00am when the owner had about had it. I was truly sorry for the noise and dust (turns out a $2000 Ermator S26 vacuum isn't completely effective when using handheld tools on vertical edges, etc). However, I am terribly thankful we were allowed to go on and add to the mess inherent in construction for the same reason I get up and do this everyday: We have a chance today to make something awesome.
The realization:
That's the whole point. Take your day, and even though your back hurts, your eyes are burning, and you are developing acne under your dust mask, MAKE SOMETHING AWESOME. All we ever have is this moment (I would like to have had two more days to make dust in Land Art to really do it like I'd like to) to do our best. If we relax until something awesome we can make comes to mind, and then doggedly work until it exists, we are pretty happy regardless of our physical conditions. As soon as we take our eyes off the prize, one point of discomfort after another will pop up until we are miserable. If you have a Bible and care to read it, check out Hebrews 12:2. There is a pretty good example of enduring what you don't want "for the glory set" before you.
Monday, August 29, 2011
just because you can, doesn't mean you should
Living and working in a small town has it's advantages: not fighting traffic too much, forgetting to lock up a truck or your shop rarely bites you, you get to know your kids' friends' folks, and if you dedicate yourself to really mastering a weird niche and are not a jerk, you eventually get a good reputation to enjoy. Some days, people will even call you and say something like "I'm building a house for a lady who saw______ in a magazine, and I know if anybody can make that out of concrete it's you." Stuff like that will inflate your head if you are not careful, but it still feels good to hear some times.
Anyway, I got a call today from a builder who was interested in concrete that looked like wood. Not such a bad idea at first blush for a theme park, a porch in the flood plane, or some other such situation where the look and texture of wood was desirable despite intense food traffic or submersion. However this was a countertop job.
"Why not just make it out of wood?" I asked. He didn't rightly know. Point is, there is something in most of us that is attracted to gimmicks like a largemouth bass to a spinner bait. Sure, no fish looks like that, but the bass tries to eat it anyhow.
I thought about the project out loud with the builder and told him that if his owner really had her heart set on something really unique that looked like wood, he ought to work with Thom Hunt from bigbamboostudios.net and have him make something out of zoopoxy (an epoxy often used for fake trees and what-not in theme parks and zoos).
After I got off the phone I started thinking about where was an appropriate place for fake wood. Disney World made sense, as the fakeness of the whole deal is part of the fun, I think. The more I thought about it, the firmer I became in my conviction. John Ruskin was right:
Anyway, I got a call today from a builder who was interested in concrete that looked like wood. Not such a bad idea at first blush for a theme park, a porch in the flood plane, or some other such situation where the look and texture of wood was desirable despite intense food traffic or submersion. However this was a countertop job.
"Why not just make it out of wood?" I asked. He didn't rightly know. Point is, there is something in most of us that is attracted to gimmicks like a largemouth bass to a spinner bait. Sure, no fish looks like that, but the bass tries to eat it anyhow.
I thought about the project out loud with the builder and told him that if his owner really had her heart set on something really unique that looked like wood, he ought to work with Thom Hunt from bigbamboostudios.net and have him make something out of zoopoxy (an epoxy often used for fake trees and what-not in theme parks and zoos).
After I got off the phone I started thinking about where was an appropriate place for fake wood. Disney World made sense, as the fakeness of the whole deal is part of the fun, I think. The more I thought about it, the firmer I became in my conviction. John Ruskin was right:
When we build, let us think that we build forever.
Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.
Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for;
and let us think, as we lay stone on stone,
that a time is to come when those stones will be held
sacred because our hands have touched them,
and that men will say, as they look upon
the labor and wrought substance of them,
“See! This our father did for us.”
Let it not be for present delight nor for present use alone.
Let it be such work as our descendants will thank us for;
and let us think, as we lay stone on stone,
that a time is to come when those stones will be held
sacred because our hands have touched them,
and that men will say, as they look upon
the labor and wrought substance of them,
“See! This our father did for us.”
—John Ruskin
Timeless design need not be something unique to projects with heavy involvement by an architect. We all know deep down when things are wack. A worn out wooden walkway works just fine, and is frankly more charming than a perfectly sealed faux wood concrete piece. Now that I look back on it, that is the essence of why I love concrete flooring. It's honest. It's exposed. It's imperfect. Human bodies worked it as hard and as skillfully as they could at some point (maybe many points). Like our bodies (though hopefully not our hearts), it get's harder and cracks. It never goes out of style, and it never wears out. In the last analysis, honesty is timeless; timelessness is honest and everything else falls short.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
a spiritual quest for beige.
We get to make a lot of really cool stuff.
The project photographed above was just finished this morning. It was about a year and a half old, ugly grey, and covered with oil stains and tire tracks when we started. We used nothing other than Kemiko acid stains, lots of little tricks, an amazing penetrating sealer that will go at least 10 years before needing anything- there is no paint, "dye", or anything else questionable used. If that is not beige, I don't know what to call it. Most important to me, I will bet that when my little kids are out of collage, this thing is a good cleaning away from looking a lot like it did today.
Note: Engrave-a-crete makes great tools and is a really positive force in our industry. I mean no disrespect to Brandon, his family, or their company. I just know that if you tell a stubborn old Kraut like me crap like that, I will find a better way.
I mean, there are much easier ways to make enough money to feed one's family than slogging it out in the Texas summer heat, crawling around with a saw cutting patterns into floors or making concrete the hard way (buckets of sand, bags of cement and our trusty little Imer mixer) only to have to bear the highest level of "hand-holding" in all of the construction trades and the most brutally competitive market for decorative concrete in the world. (Texas was referred to in Concrete Decor Magazine as "the starvation market"). I don't remember the last time my work day didn't end with me smelling like a homeless man. My big, pointy nose gets filled with concrete dust regularly, my joints hurt most mornings, and we risk tens of thousands of dollars every day. Good news is, I really don't think I could be happier!
How rad is it to make a living making stuff you think is great with guys you like for awesome people? God bless America, eh? But enough about all that - I bet you are not reading this because you care about how I smell or how my nose feels for that matter.
What I hope to share here is a reminder that while edgy concrete wall panels and ornate medallions in floors look cool in our portfolio, what it is really about is the day to day consistency. I haven't written here too much recently because I have been maniacally focused on building systems that make the day to day work of the artisans of element7concrete better and more consistent. And to that end, we are maniacs for beige.
"There is no beige acid stain" - Brandon Adamson at my 2nd day of training at Engrave-a-crete in Florida. It's early 2006, and I have committed to going into the decorative concrete business, but I am still working my union job, and taking every seminar in the nation I can before moving to TX to take over the company I have ran for the last 5 years. Brandon went on - "Sealer should be re-applied once a year or maybe once every two years."
This all sounded like crap to me. I lived in Las Vegas at the time, and most things were beige. Re-sealing annually? Sounded like a white elephant for sale to me. I knew my own concrete driveway at home hadn't been touched for at least 4 years and while it was grey and totally unremarkable, it was not something I had to deal with. There had to be a better way.
The project photographed above was just finished this morning. It was about a year and a half old, ugly grey, and covered with oil stains and tire tracks when we started. We used nothing other than Kemiko acid stains, lots of little tricks, an amazing penetrating sealer that will go at least 10 years before needing anything- there is no paint, "dye", or anything else questionable used. If that is not beige, I don't know what to call it. Most important to me, I will bet that when my little kids are out of collage, this thing is a good cleaning away from looking a lot like it did today.
Note: Engrave-a-crete makes great tools and is a really positive force in our industry. I mean no disrespect to Brandon, his family, or their company. I just know that if you tell a stubborn old Kraut like me crap like that, I will find a better way.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
Show me a picture, and I'll cut it into your floor.
Custom home builders love us because of how we improve the experience for their customers. One way we do that is by cutting a medallion in the foyer based on anything they already have and like (contrasted with selecting from catalogs or samples at a store).
It's less permanent than a tattoo, but we still careful to pick something that translates well to concrete and is timeless. The floor we recently finished for Dave and Vicki Shurman in a home by Reven Builders is typical,
This one was based on a coat rack. They had owned this coat rack for years and just always seemed to feel better after looking at it. I think a swirling sun is about as primal as you can get, and the engraving process is not wholly unlike the petroglyphs of the Native American tribes of the Southwest. Vicki gave Todd (awesome guy on our team since 2006) this photo as something they liked and would like a medallion of:
It's less permanent than a tattoo, but we still careful to pick something that translates well to concrete and is timeless. The floor we recently finished for Dave and Vicki Shurman in a home by Reven Builders is typical,
This one was based on a coat rack. They had owned this coat rack for years and just always seemed to feel better after looking at it. I think a swirling sun is about as primal as you can get, and the engraving process is not wholly unlike the petroglyphs of the Native American tribes of the Southwest. Vicki gave Todd (awesome guy on our team since 2006) this photo as something they liked and would like a medallion of:
This picture was passed onto me on the second day of the project (winter 2010 I think), and I knew that it would be best to translate this on a finished floor after the sealer had really cured out. So, we finished the floor and let the other monkeys ply their trades, planning to put it down when we came back for the final polish.
Now in July, the house is about done and it was time to do the final polish and install this medallion. Putting a Ermator S26 vacuum on the tools, and having an great team cleaning up on my heals made working in a finished home a breeze. I dug the hand made look of the coat rack, and wanted that to translate to the floor with little deviation in the swirl, but better rays. Rather than sandblasting or using a needle scaler, this one was cut free-hand with a 4" grinder so the texture of the engraving accentuates the design.
The best part, though was Vicki saying "That is exactly what I hoped for". I thought to myself "You saying that is exactly what I hoped for!"
I am really thankful to be able to feed my family making stuff I think is cool for people I like. Thank you David and Vicki Shurman, Larry and Randy Reven (I don't know Mrs. Reven, but she must be a saint).
Sunday, June 26, 2011
All's well that ends well - Correcting Construction Errors Episode 5
We did it! It was a long day of grinding, scrubbing, head-scratching, re-staining, and rinsing, but we did it. The floor described earlier in "Avoiding Construction Errors" now looks pretty sweet. Like so many before it, the floor is actually better now than if everything would've gone as we hoped it would have.
Because of a mishap with my iPhone, and the SD card for my camera doubling as a vehicle for an audiobook I wanted our interns to hear, I have no pictures of the corrected floor to share here now. Photos of floors in homes without proper walls or trim stink anyhow. I know it sounds like I am trying show the bright side of "the dog eating my homework" and I might be. I will try to get some proper pictures when we do the final polish and will post them to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Element7-concrete-design/105210402870801
(please click "like" there if you haven't already) and put them on twitter as well. You can follow us there @element_7.
What we did to fix it is hone the floor with bonded-diamond-abrasives (blocks of metal and resin with little bits of diamond in them), re-stain it, rinse it, densify (apply a chemical that makes the concrete hard and dust-proof), and then come back the following day and finish it out with a stone oil/paste wax. The stamping done outside by the concrete contractor is not the best I've seen, so it's not likely that'll make it into our portfolio, but the interior floor is first-class. The low spots of the floor kept a bit more of the dark walnut stain from before, and the overall texture is buttery smooth now. There is good color movement and the finish is refined, yet rustic. Like much of work when it's right on, it looks brand new and 100 years old at the same time. Sorry if that seems a bit self-promoting, but after all the blood and sweat poured into this one, I am really stoked with the finished floor.
Because of a mishap with my iPhone, and the SD card for my camera doubling as a vehicle for an audiobook I wanted our interns to hear, I have no pictures of the corrected floor to share here now. Photos of floors in homes without proper walls or trim stink anyhow. I know it sounds like I am trying show the bright side of "the dog eating my homework" and I might be. I will try to get some proper pictures when we do the final polish and will post them to http://www.facebook.com/pages/Element7-concrete-design/105210402870801
(please click "like" there if you haven't already) and put them on twitter as well. You can follow us there @element_7.
What we did to fix it is hone the floor with bonded-diamond-abrasives (blocks of metal and resin with little bits of diamond in them), re-stain it, rinse it, densify (apply a chemical that makes the concrete hard and dust-proof), and then come back the following day and finish it out with a stone oil/paste wax. The stamping done outside by the concrete contractor is not the best I've seen, so it's not likely that'll make it into our portfolio, but the interior floor is first-class. The low spots of the floor kept a bit more of the dark walnut stain from before, and the overall texture is buttery smooth now. There is good color movement and the finish is refined, yet rustic. Like much of work when it's right on, it looks brand new and 100 years old at the same time. Sorry if that seems a bit self-promoting, but after all the blood and sweat poured into this one, I am really stoked with the finished floor.
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