Its all about the color…

First things first… to all our friends in DC… Brrr. Hope you are all enjoying the snow and haven’t run out of milk or toilet paper yet.

The concrete countertops are still moving forward albeit not as quickly as up to this point.  We had a somewhat no progress day yesterday trying to get form tables built.  The pour table is where we will be building the forms and pouring the counter tops. As you might expect they need to be pretty strong and they need to be dead level.

We are trying to build one long (16’x4’) table to pour all of the counter pieces on in one long form. There will be joints integrated into the form, but doing it this way allows us to make sure that the joints are going to be very tight when we install the counter. The issue that we ran into yesterday was finding saw horses and materials that would stay level and support the weight of the counter. The plastic saw horses that we started with bowed at the bottom of the legs and definitely were not going to be strong enough. We also were seeing some very serious crowning and rolling of the edges of the plywood either from them coming warped or from being stored on the floor raised on 2x4’s

So we are revising and revamping our table pouring plans as we speak.

We also ran into an issue with the colors. All of the samples came out too dark for what the “client” wants so we are searching for a pre-mixed color alternative. This will wind up being more expensive, but its important to get the color right since the counter will be around a while.  This is a big lesson learned for us. Agreeing on a color is a big deal and something that needs to be done up front so that getting materials in is not a critical path item that slips schedules.

We are still hoping for a pour date of December 26th, but we’ll have to see if that works.  So far we are one day behind our schedule and don’t know what out color will be or how long the material will take to get here.

The one bright spot from yesterdays adventures was that we worked some with the wet polisher on the samples and it makes for an incredible finish on the concrete. The aggregate comes up super easy and looks really beautiful and the surface polishes to a glass like finish. It pays to have the right tools. I wish we had some pictures of Jessie soaking wet after polishing up the samples, but the camera was absent from most of our work yesterday. We’ll take some pictures today, promise.

--Tom