Designers have been incorporating concrete in high end homes, retail and restaurant spaces for years – ever wonder why?  These are the five top reasons you should consider concrete for your next project, be it your dream kitchen or the bath vanities in a high volume concert venue!

Concrete is fashionable and helps to sell homes

1. Concrete is fashionable. Over the past 20 years, concrete countertops have been steadily adopted by the design community. What used to seem raw and ultra-modern now graces the covers of issue after issue of the top mainstream design and trade magazines.  With that new popularity have come innovations in concrete chemistry and craftsmanship yielding more beautiful and resilient concrete countertops.
2. Concrete is a chameleon.  Color and finish are very important when personalizing your space. Natural or mass produced artificial stone provide a fixed set of options when it comes to color and finish.  Concrete, when pigmented by a professional, can be cast in literally millions of colors and shades. It’s not uncommon for designers and clients to request color matching of a paint chip, tile or fabric swatch.  Because concrete can include any variety of types and colors of sand, stones, glass and shell aggregates, the texture and finish can be tailored to meet your exact wishes.  A good concrete professional can also use different pouring and polishing techniques to produce a honed finish, terrazzo finish, high polish or veined look.
   

   Concrete is flexible, in shape, in color and in finish

3. Concrete is flexible.  Unlike mass produced countertop materials that come in sheets cut to size, concrete, can be designed and cast in 3-D.  Precast features such as integrated sinks, drying racks, cutting boards, bowls, or even fountains enhance a design’s utility and beauty. These complex shapes are cast from liquid concrete and take full advantage of its flexibility of shape.  Replicating these features from sheet materials is at best clunky and if attempted usually results in visible seams and a less than polished look.
4. Concrete is a sales tool.  In the past, granite countertops were a noted feature on most home listings. However, as granite has been commoditized, its value has dropped and it can now be found in many lower-end homes and even apartments. Home buyers that used to be attracted to granite are becoming bored with it, seeking more unique finish options. Concrete provides a draw to buyers’ in today’s modern, competitive market.
5. 

   Concrete is green. This installation included 80% recycled content.

   Concrete is green. Although Portland Cement requires energy to produce, the rest of concrete is composed of commonly found local components.  Ingredients including clay, sand, rocks and water can be sourced here instead of strip mining a limited resource of specialty rock, slicing it up, then crating and shipping it halfway around the world.  An environmentally conscious concrete contractor can incorporate recycled components in the product, reducing energy demand and keeping material out of landfills. Concrete can even be recycled to create more concrete, the ultimate in eco-friendly recycling.

These are some of the top reasons to select concrete – though more abound and we’ll be sure to share them on the blog in the future.  In the meantime, tell us about your projects and dream homes.

If you’ve put concrete in a design lately – what were your reasons?  If you didn’t, why did you choose granite or another material instead?  What is stopping you from trying concrete?

Just found this video on Decorative concrete….what Blayde says about finding the right contractor is really the take-away from this video

Those that follow my work may recognise that I rarely cast pour-in-place. This is because, quite simply, you cannot get the same flatness and finish as a precast piece, even if you have been trowelling concrete for 50 years. Limits exist. However, every once in a while I come across a customer who has fallen in love with the cast in place look. It’s more primal, more rustic, with variations to color and texture that tend not to occur with precast.

This recent client has a Cast-in-place concrete island in another home and loves it. Always the accomodator, it seemed prudent to follow her wishes. Despite some technical challenges with the mixer, the end product ended up looking exactly as I had expected. I had to stay around for seveal hours after the pour to trowel and re-trowel every 30-45 minutes, but the result is a smooth and even slab with consistant corners and gentle color variations.

The end of the casting day, notice the support framing around the cabinets.

Day after casting…notice how much the color changes over night

This sink, in SLATE with recycled glass sand, is 6 ft long. That’s big!

What does one learn from a 12 ft long, 10 inch tall vanity with a 6 ft sink?

1. Bigger really is better!
2. Due to the slot drain and the thin x-section in the sink, the center of the 6ft sink actually sagged slightly and needed to be supported.
3. You can never have enough silicone – the 6 ft long slot drain leaked initially, between the catch and the concrete – requiring 2 follow-up visits. eventually we fixed it, though.
4. You can never have enough helpers. This thing took some real effort to get to the 2nd floor. However, due to the GFRC technology, it weighed less than 300lb.

Hong Kong is an insanely bustling port city and business center. It is also the home of the largest decorative overlay installation ever installed. At the Celestial Heights Condo complex, an impossibly huge living structure, 600,000 square feet of 1/4″ stamped and stained decorative concrete was installed in 2009. Having seen this structure firsthand, its one amazing achievement.

Celestial Heights - Aptly Named

Celestial Heights up close.

1/4" Stamped and Stained Concrete

Additionally, Hong Kong hosted a plethora of ongoing construction, all of which supported and contained by bamboo scaffolding. Its not just for movie effects so that Jackie Chan can have a backdrop on which to perform in Rush Hour 2, Bamboo is the way they do it.

OSHA Inspectors would weep

Bucket Loading concrete - Standing on Bamboo!

Super-size my order, please

At the Langham Samui – decorative polished concrete was used extensively in the rooms and public areas. 

Corner Detailing of 1/2" polished concrete overlay...Notice the Brass Dividers

Edge detail including fill spots

As mentioned in the March 20 post, we returned from the Concrete Decor Show with 3 Awards. We received accolades in 3 categories, including Sculpture, Bath and Integral Sink. The Sculpture award was an honorable mention for this birdhouse, which is detailed in the October 17th Blog Post.

Sculpture Category - Concrete Bird Condo

The Bath award is for this powder room sink, which has an integral copper recirculating fountain as well as attached wooden magazine shelf in the end. The drain is a slot which turns a 90° angle. The real trick, however, was building it with 2 pigments as a single solid piece……that one is a trade secret!

Bath Category - 2 color powder sink with fountain

Integral Copper Fountain

The Integral sink award, also an honorable mention, is for this extra long trough vessel, which included a concrete countertop below it and a freestanding ‘bridge’ to add counter space. The bridge is only 1/2″ thick but is amply strong to hold 50lb easily. Advanced reinforcement is the key.

Integral Sink Category - Trough Vessel with Bridge

1/2" thick concrete bridge

Show Entrance, Phoenix convention center

Concrete Decor is a magazine……yes, there is a magazine for everything….I also read Concrete Construction, Concrete Expressions and even Concrete Home (which is actually published here in Austin!). This year, Concrete Decor, put on a trade show of it’s own in Phoenix, AZ. Unable to attend this year’s World of Concrete tradeshow, I felt I needed to be in Arizona to keep updated on the industry. I am very glad I did. Not only did I walk away with 3 Awards from the Cheng Circle of Distinction design competition, but learned of a great many things changing in the industry.

1. GFRC, which we have been using for a couple of years, is getting even more popular, with industry mainstays Buddy Rhodes and Cheng Concrete both modifying their established training programs to include the technology. 
2. Glow-in-the-dark glass shards and glow-in-the-dark SAND  from multiple vendors.  This has been offered for several years and we have built a couple of small pieces that included some GID shards, but the sand is new to me, and being offered both as a “hey, that’s neat” feature as well as an option for safety in commercial buildings, as it meets code for emergency safety egress markings.
   

   Glow-in-the-dark Stones from Heritage Glass

3. Multiple vendors for cast sink molds, which we have had to make ourselves in the past. There are still painfully few styles, but with competition growing, the cost of these molds is dropping. This should help the industry in troubled times. Now all we need is someone that can do custom ones for competative prices and I could dispense with my liquid plastics and fiberglass resin!
4. I found a vendor for post consumer recycled glass sand. So far we have been using post industrial, which works well, but as a big fan of closing that recycling loop, I am excited by the prospect. Unfortunately, it isnt clear like the industrial, but should be very useful in the darker colors.
5. We learned a new way to improve outr sealing process just a little more by switching our spray equipment.
6. Found another option for a spray pump and believe that it may suit my needs for aggregate gfrc.

Agressive Floor Grinders

519 Booth

As part of the remodel of their S. Lamar location, Uchi updated their restrooms to include cast concrete sinks and countertops.

To help alleviate residual moisture on the countertops, a problem that plagues heavy use areas, such as RR in eateries, they went with a countertop that slopes toward the sink on all sides. After one itiration, we landed on a slope that works perfectly….about 4.5 degrees. A prior attempt at about 2 degrees was found to still allow drops to sit on the surface, rather than drain away.

It was on this glorious day that I was able to move my blog from the previous blogspot domain, into my webpage. I got to learn a lot of html that I had forgotten and a bunch that I never knew. Of course its not perfect, there is a little work to still be done, and lots more blog posts to create.