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When your country calls you to do a job, how much should you charge? That was the predicament Dick Krach, CEO of Sundek of Washington, came face to face with when his secretary fielded a call from someone at a “white house” concerning a pool deck that needed repair and some sprucing up.
If you’re going the makeover route, why not make it extreme. Or at least dramatic.
Either description can be applied to the three-pronged game plan devised to vastly revamp the hardscapes surrounding a sprawling, exclusive residential property on the Central California coast.
Troy Lemon, founder and president of Cornerstone Decorative Concrete in Holland, Mich., starts his story with a familiar admission. “I was a concrete guy way before I was a decorative concrete guy,” he says.
Even on the thumb tip of northwest Washington state, decorative concrete is making its mark, thanks to this father-son outfit.
The working conditions weren’t those of a stateside project, but the objective was the same: Build a skate park that had the smooth curves and flawless finishes of any topnotch park in the U.S. Learn how this contractor skated to perfection.
The project was a lot simpler than the one Baltz ended up with. “I was first approached to do some hardscape and subbase for a network of brick or paver stone terraces,” he recalls. “The connecting walkways were going to be asphalt.” He can’t hide the disdain in his voice when he makes that last statement.
Scott Cohen, artisan and construction defect expert witness, whose company The Green Scene makes decorative backyards and pools in Southern California, has observed problems around salt-chlorinated pools too, but he is far from certain that all salt pools are problematic.
A 16-foot-tall concrete wave? Concrete artists created this and more at a 15,000-square-foot skate park.
An “outrageous” beach house on the French side of the Caribbean island St. Martin needed an anything-but-usual outdoor table.
Shotcrete is not a physical product. It cannot be touched or held in your hand. Shotcrete is a process or verb. It is the action of placing concrete to achieve high strengths and low permeability.
Imagine this: You own an estate in the California hills overlooking Monterey Bay. You are a lover of art and natural beauty. You want a swimming pool complex with a large concrete deck and pool house. You want it to accentuate the surrounding landscape and incorporate the feel of the bay, but you’re not sure how you want to achieve that. Who do you call?
Bruce Williamson, of Carrollton, Texas, and a team from French manufacturer Decopierre used a unique limestone veneer to give this bell tower a historic look.
When asked if concrete contractors should add safety surfacing to their roster of services, George Coon’s answer was a question that was succinct and to the point: “Do they want to make money?”
When taking the plunge into a pool construction or renovation project, don’t forget the stormwater drainage.
At first glance, the dock looks like it’s floating just above the water. “It turned out exactly how I wanted it,” says Reuben Keim, co-owner of Keim Concrete in Wooster, Ohio, about his concrete platform. The pier and dock, which sit about a foot above the surface of a 2-acre pond in Keim’s backyard, was fashioned with Proline form liners.
In suburb located northwest of Denver a new park sits on 9 1/2 acres of open land across from its city hall. Built to give the community a gathering spot where children could play and families could stroll, take in art and view live performances.
Let’s say you’re part of a design and construction team that has settled on a stunning look for a high-profile exterior concrete project — the entry to a corporate office, a monument to fallen heroes or maybe a creatively upgraded pedestrian walkway for a downtown shopping district.
In Los Angeles, and in particular the Beverly Hills area of the city, there are many OMG backyards. This one, though, created by Scott Cohen’s company, Green Scene Landscaping & Swimming Pools, was over-the-top enough to have been featured last summer on the television show “OMG Backyards.”
As for Hileman’s original vision of using actual coco logs in construction, remember “termites” and realize it is nice to fool Mother Nature — and human guests — in the name of maintenance.
Although aesthetics are certainly a key component in any decorative concrete project, that doesn’t mean function should take a back seat. When a Joplin, Mo., homeowner was experiencing drainage and erosion problems, Jim Snodgrass installed a series of walls and stairways that not only controlled water flow, but was visually pleasing to the rest of the high-end subdivision.
