What can I say? Sometimes all you need is the simplicity of natural concrete to set off the gleam and pizzazz of uber-cool hardware. It works. My clients make me proud to be a part of their domestic visions – well, at least a part…

Please recall, dear reader, that our artisan concrete studio is located in southern Vermont, one of the smallest and most rural states in the Union – we are noted more for our cheese and moose than our taste in modern furnishings. And then along comes a concrete-inclined couple from Halifax, VT (population 792 in 39 square miles; 2000 census), living on a dirt road 20 miles from our shop, and plops a box with an deep, boxy Italian sink and a wicked cool German faucet setup in front of me, and says  “We need a bathroom vanity top!”. Of course.

These shots are from install day, which is our only chance to document our work most of the time unfortunately (the wall color in this little room was dominating, to say the least; the natural gray concrete top appears green! - I’m sure the clients will work out the balance as they begin to occupy the space). On these occasions, the lighting is usually poor, if not very incomplete; cabinetry is bare bones and lacking hardware; finish trim is missing; and all the little details that complete a living space are in absentia. We get the best images we can at the time; it is a work in progress and we move on to the next episode.

So, the walls are a deep orange (which re-tints everything in its glowing proximity) around the sink area and a soft purple gray (nice) in the bath area… there will be a full wall mirror over the vanity when complete and some funky Euro sconces flanking the alcove (once the contractor figures out to to adapt their svelte base plates to a hulking American wiring device box – good luck, sir!). You never know what lurks inside those walls: someone’s personal interpretation of a bathing retreat tucked into the hemlock and spruce forest along a muddy March road, replete with sap buckets and three foot snowbanks. But we do…

Yesterday we installed the Lake Champlain-inspired bartop in its intended home in Wilmington, Vermont; it “fit like a clock”, as a friend used to say, and the installation process went  quite smoothly and with dispatch. The thoughts behind the design elements incorporated in this highly figured piece were apparent once it was resting in the surroundings; all the colors, shapes, and features worked together to form an ensemble or collage that “belonged” in the owner’s beautiful new kitchen. And there’s the magic: it is all about the client, the environment, and the artisan’s interpretation of it all through the medium of concrete. Functional art: You have to see it to comprehend it.

Pantone, the world-reknowned authority on color, has announced that the color of the year for 2010 is Turquoise, specifically #15-5519 in their coding scheme. What does that mean? Well, it will get a lot of buzz in the fashion and design world, and show up in increasingly large amounts in our current surroundings until a new lucky winner is announced. But for some people, turquoise is already a favorite and the endorsement of a global taste-maker is only icing on the already-baked cake.

We have been working on a custom vanity top with an integral sink for a local client with whom we have had a pleasant collaboration in the past – a garden sculpture/fountain. Expanding on the ideas we explored in that venture, we are now incorporating them into into the new commission. The  four foot wide top is hand-pressed in natural gray concrete (our “Stone” tone) and features a gently rounded, deep oblong basin inspired by an antique  hand-carved wooden bowl. On the edge of the basin is a  terraced soap recess which will hold a special incised leaf tile. The faucet fixture is a wall-mount style, a Waterbridge style in Rustic Nickle finish, from Sonoma Forge. We created a narrow backsplash “shelf ” to house the fixture at the back of the concrete countertop, since the wall partition there was too shallow to accomodate it. The whole is acid-stained in the aforementioned turquoise, with a touch of green and brown, to work into the bathroom’s design scheme. This includes warm Mexican tile on the floor, original natural wood trim and cabinetry, and white fixtures and tub/tile surround with a sprinkle of turquoise blue decorative inserts.  Another wonderful example of artisan concrete’s ability to become whatever one might wish!

The “Lake Champlain Shoreline” project we are currently working upon has taken on another manifestation: after several days of wet-curing, the piece was unwrapped and partially diamond ground to expose the native aggregate and the crushed beach glass hidden below the cast surface. The bands of color are striking in their many hues and shapes, wandering across the bartop suggesting eddies of water and an undulating coastline. The solid color band at the arched edge will be acid-stained after final processing and add its own characteristic mottled patina to the composition. Small terraced topographical indentations add to the freeform shape and lend contrast to the adjacent smooth surface.

The lake interpreted in customized concrete: Art-formed by Concrete Detail.

We are working on a sweet little project with some neighbors of mine in Wilmington, Vermont (I commute down the mountain to the studio in Brattleboro every morning…). The clients are a great couple I have known for a long time; I actually worked with Matt in my past life as a carpenter in the Deerfield Valley. He and his wonderful wife Angela have a summer cottage on the northeastern shore of Lake Champlain, Vermont’s closest thing to seashore (Vermont is the only New England state without a coastline!). Well, it may be a lake, but it’s a huge one and it has its share of beachcombing treasures. The bartop we are creating for their newly renovated kitchen in Wilmington is incorporating some of the glass treasures they have collected over the years. We are also emulating the undulating shape of a natural shoreline with the outer perimeter of this raised peninsula counter which will serve as an informal eating area overlooking the cooktop.

The crushed glass is only one facet of this accent piece: there will be three bands of color winding across the polished surface. One with the glass; another with exposed aggregate (native gravel), and a wider band with an acid-wash in greens and browns. Several small topographic terraces are sculpted into an edge to suggest natural erosion and the work of the elements that shape our world. Concrete is an excellent medium to showcase all of these design motifs in a single work of functional art which ties together the client, their environment, and the artisan/interpreter.

This is what we do – we love concrete!

We revisited the scene of our first major commercial installation at Works Bakery Cafe  in Manchester, Vermont (this past summer) for a site review and to discuss an upcoming project with Richard French, the owner. Richard (“Frenchie”) is full of energy, optimism, ideas, and is just – well – contagiously alive. A great kick in the pants – and I mean that in all the best ways! I shot some of the interior while there, as we only had installation night pictures previously, and the joie d’vivre expressed in the design scheme (the work of Richard’s lovely and talented wife Christy Bonneau ) shows through in these images. And the food is great!

Art Underfoot

We’re just wrapping up another facet of the studio relocation to the Book Press building: the new office/showroom space. A 14 x 20 area was partitioned out of the 4800 sq. ft. shop to create a dust-free and “quieter” administrative workspace and display area for our concrete countertops and other cast architectural elements. We approached the project with an intention of honoring the hard-working past by giving it a new task: providing a textural counterpoint to the displays of finely finished artisan concrete which we will showcase there in the coming months.

The pre-existing  40 year old concrete slab floor was in pretty rough shape from its former life as a printing factory – gouges, drilled holes, layers of grease, ink, solvents, oil, and other nastiness had left their industrial mark. We scraped and scrubbed off the topmost layers, then rented a diamond floor grinder to get down to the raw concrete in preparation for staining it with a wash of transparent colors. We removedabout 60 pounds of concrete dust with the machine and an attached vacuum, exposing the aggregate to varying degrees in the process. Then multiple washes and wet-vaccing to clean up all residue before we spray applied 5 shades of water-based stain to create a vivid organic land/waterscape, sealed with a satin floor sealer. The result is a walkable canvas – what we call “Art Underfoot” – which will set the space apart as befits its purpose and “wow” our visitors with implications of concrete possibilities. Stop in and check it out!

Not every project we undertake is a concrete countertop… Recently we created 15 cast concrete windowsills for a client’s residence in Westmoreland, New Hampshire. The client returned a little while ago and asked about creating a matching concrete hearth for a brick fireplace in the home: the same integral  terra-cotta color and the same molded profile on the lower edge. This was to be 3 inches thick with a gently arcing leading edge and a ”tongue” locking into the firebox area. We decided to block out part of the underside to reduce weight and make handling a little easier for all concerned. By doing so, we reduced the weight by about 25 %, down to 200 pounds of wetcast standard weight concrete. Every little bit (less) helps!

Yesterday we installed our second integral farm sink which was poured in two colors simultaneously – I posted in-progress shots of this a few days ago.  Here’s a photo of the (very compact) kitchen before we pulled the old Formica tops with the drop-in stainless steel sink in preparation for the new concrete countertops. This is a service which I am happy to offer homeowners, simplifying their scheduling and coordinating for the R & R involved with most simple remodel projects. Make it easy.

After we removed the screws holding the builtup laminate tops to the cabinet corner blocks from beneath and cut the caulked backsplash upper edge away from the painted wall, we carefully lifted them out and exposed the cabinet tops. We cleaned excess caulk, adhesives, and joint compound away from the contact surfaces and then turned our attention to the sink base cabinet. Since we were installing an exposed apron front farm sink, we needed to modify the cabinet frame to accept the sink’s projecting mass. We cut the topmost rail at the endjoints and removed the dividing stile at the false front panels in the same manner. This left a rectangular cutout into which the sink box could slide and fit tightly (we planned it that way, of course – every retrofit farm sink is a little different than the next and made exactly to order). We built a rugged shelf inside the cabinet, flush with the cutout to help carry the weight of the casting and made a circular opening in the 3/4″ plywood for the sink drain fitting to pass through.

Then we carried the concrete countertop section with the integral sink into the house ( not the fun part!) and slid it into place. Voila! It’s all in the planning. The remainder of the sections were placed, aligned, shimmed and adhered. The four backsplash sections followed suit. Several minutes of photographs documented the process and off we went. Another custom concrete creation by Concrete Detail for an appreciative client – thank you! Off to the next – a streamlined top in “Sage” with extra black sand exposed in the honed surface, an undermount Blanco Silgranit sink, and embedded glass mosaic tiles – stay posted…

Mid-pour: cap mold in place

We have begun another area kitchen this past week: concrete countertops in “Night” shade and an integral farm sink in “Slate”. Following hard on the heels of the Nelson project, we are once again pouring two colors simultaneously, stacking them in the form and consolidating with vibration. Being a smallish kitchen, this set of tops has no integral drainboard taking up surface area, but it does have a soap dish recess and a small scoop around the faucet mounting area, to catch drips from users with wet hands. The sink itself is quite large, a 30 x 18 single bowl with generously rounded corners (1 3/4″ radii) amd of course a pitched bottom to a standard-sized drain flange set back from dead center a bit.

We also incorporated a simple rectangular frame panel into the exposed front apron as an accent, broadcast crushed blue bottle glass in one corner of the main top, and placed four pairs of “Slate” square inserts at the angled seam to the right of the sink. All excellent examples of concrete’s versatility and ability to be personalized for a unique application…