I just can't resist

Third time's a charm, and we all know how charming I am (is your tongue in your cheek? mine is!). I want you all to know that it is very hard being a Fairy Princess Concrete Finisher. My magic wand is a magnesium float that weighs about half a ton. Well, not really, but when I have floated 1000 square feet of concrete, it sure feels that heavy. I wish you could all be there to see me work. It must be fricking hilarious. The funniest thing I can imagine is watching me push this big old float out on a slab, and then being too short to pull it back. This happens because I usually work with two handles, which is 12 feet of reach. On bigger slabs, I have to add another handle which then makes eighteen feet. I forget to change the angle on the head to allow for the extra six feet of reach. My DH can pull it back easily... he is six feet tall. I am short, so I can't do it. This makes me cuss, using words that any sailor would be proud of! If I am lucky, there is some fool standing around watching that I can entice into reaching out and plucking the float off the slab. If not, then I tear a huge assed hole pulling it back, which I then get to go back and fix. (Rule #1 in concrete finishing... it ain't a fuck up if you can fix it) (Rule #2 is don't let the DH *see* you either screw up, or fix said screw up) Talk about pitching a bitch! It hurts my delicate ears!

After the finishing is done, then comes the stamping. Some stamping is easier than others. My late favorite is skins. These are big mats that have no borders on them. They are easy, since there are no lines to keep straight or worry about. They put down the texture when you walk on them. YAY! I love easy stuff. Here is a picture of two different colors using the same texture, and a close up of the texture.

My least favorite is the fishscale or Euro Cobble pattern. I make the hubby charge extra for this one. The damn tools are gigantic, and they are the hardest to line up and keep straight. I think they weigh about 40 lbs each. Imagine picking it up and putting it down 100 times in 113 degree heat. Fun huh?? Here is a pic of the Euro Cobble. It's pretty, but dang! Aren't the steps cool?

I think my second favorite pattern is the Yorkstone Slate. There are a ton of tools in this set and they fit together in increments. Each tool is separate, so no two jobs are ever identical, because it is almost impossible to duplicate the set exactly. They start at 6" x 12" and go up to 42" x 42". The colors used can drastically change the look from sandstone to slate. If you go in and hand tint, it is incredible. We used this pattern for an historic restoration project on the Marland Mansion in Ponca City. It was an awesome job.

Just so you don't think my job is all sweetness and light, there are some serious hazards to being a FPCF. One of these hazards is the dreaded concrete pump. We *hate* the pump. It is a dirty, dangerous piece of equipment. Unfortunately, sometimes we simply have no choice but to use one. This project was the roof of the library at Tulsa University. There was no way we could get a mixer to it, and we couldn't hardly expect our poor crew to wheelbarrow 14 thousand square feet. Talk about murder by concrete. Here is a picture of a concrete pump.

In order to use a pump, you must first prime it. This means you have to order a yard of grout from the concrete company. Grout is basically watered down concrete without any rocks, and it sort of greases the inside of the hoses to make the concrete pass. Sorta like those fiber pills my DH chokes down! HA! Anyway...after you have lubed the hose, then you start pumping the concrete through the system. This is great, until you have to stop. On this particular job, we had to stop a lot, since the pours were all 8 foot by 8 foot. Now every time you stop the pump, you risk a clog. Then you have the excitement of running up and down the hose with a sledge hammer pounding on it, trying to break up the clog. If this doesn't work, then you disconnect the hoses piece by piece till you find the clog and dump it out. Unfortunately sometimes there is a defective hose, and when the pressure builds up, it can explode. This actually happened to us on the TU job. I shudder to think what would have happened if any of us had been standing next to that hose. It shot rocks at least 75 feet, and was so explosive that concrete actually wrapped around the round light fixtures. It was terrifying, and gave me a whole new respect for the danger involved. I have no doubt that it would have been deadly had anyone been any closer than 50 feet.

At the end of each day, you have to take the hoses apart and wash out each section. What a pain! Not to mention the monumental mess the pump itself makes. It spews concrete everywhere, and guess who gets to clean that up? Certainly not the pump jockey, or the mixer driver...

FIRE!!!

Ok, not really. This is one of the reasons I don't mind getting up early.

If I wasn't a FPCF, I would miss out on sunrises like this!

More of our work...

I have a bazillion and a half pictures. I am going to post them all today! Did I scare you?

Yorkstone Slate. Nice smooth texture for patios and sidewalks!

Here is a closeup detail of the optical illusion sample. I love the colors in this piece.


This is our shellstone pattern. Can you see the starfish and the sea horse? This is an especially nice pattern for around a pool deck. Very cute!



Here are more of the display samples we have at our shop. We make them on days when we don't have anything else to do! Fun to experiment with pattern and color.

This is a permanent sample walk on the side of our shop. It has several patterns in different colors so people can make informed decisions on a pattern and color.



These are pots we made to put along Route 66 as it runs through Tulsa. They are two feet square and weigh abou t 600 lbs each. A lot of merchants on Route 66 have all kinds of symbols painted on their buildings. They were excited to have these planters by their businesses. These look pretty cool when they are planted with bright flowers. They are spread through the city.



Speaking of Route66, here is a picture of the finished symbol on our building. You can see it a long way away! People come to our shop and ask if we are the museum LOL


We had a customer with a very important project that wanted to see samples. They could only come look on a Saturday. Of course, it was raining, so we laid out over 75 of our small samples in our shop. Here is a small sample of what he saw.



Here were the final 3 choices for that project. This one has two different colors in the plain fields and hand tinted stones on the borders. One border is brown shades, and the other is grays. Both look nice to me



This is the third choice, and what they finally decided on for the project. This is Russet Running Bond Cobblestone with a field of cream Coquina stone. We ended up doing over fifty thousand square feet of this pattern on the project. It is the biggest project we have done to date, and took most of a summer.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take any pictures, so the only picture I have is one I found on the internet, and here it is. I guess they couldn't stop folks flying over and shooting pictures :-) Our concrete work is on the right hand side with the fountain in the middle. That is the motor court. Maybe some day I will find the one that shows the 700 foot long drive.

Pictures of our stuff

Lots of people have asked to see more pictures of our work. Here are a few.

This is our running bond brick pattern. The texture for this pattern was taken directly off of Coffeyville Pavers. There is even actual lettering on some of the bricks.

Here is a chase brick paver pattern.

Herrinbgone brick.


Granite with matching stepping stones and stoop.

Here is the fountain at our shop. We generally don't do this kind of work, but we will if someone has deep pockets. It is not easy. We only did the basin, not the actual fountain. We purchased that and stained it. It is nice in the summer

This is our address marker. We cast the numbers separately from the pedestal. The numbers are 2 feet tall. What fun!

This is a sample we did for a concrete countertop. It is laying on the floor at our office. All of the floors are stained with different colors and patterns. It makes a nice sample for people to come and see.

Hand tinted running bond cobble. A sample for a VIP client (we got the job!)

This is a sign for the City of Tulsa. Of course we still have it...it was never paid for, and it is huge, so I guess it will sit there till the world ends, or we find someone who wants it...whichever occurs first.

Precast address/mail box posts

Tabletop sitting on an optical illusion sample.

Ok, I am going to continue this on a second page. There are just too many pictures :)

Death by concrete!

I swear, my hubby is trying to kill me. This winter has been very slow for us, so we have been in the office drinking coffee, playing video games and shopping on Ebay. In other words, we have been lazy and are out of shape. Now generally, for someone who aspires to win the lotto and become a bon bon queen, this is not a huge problem. Unfortunately, for someone who makes their living working with concrete, this is *not* a good thing. The little leaf patio we did was a warm up for our current job. It was not enough of a warm up.

This one is in a brand new housing addition. Fortunately, there are no houses yet, so at least we don't have to work around people living there. It is in the middle of the road, and is a large crosswalk/intersection with islands that will have grass or trees or some other vegetation I suppose. The bad thing is that the place we are working is also directly in the middle of the entire addition, so other trades want to drive through. Apparently nobody has told them there is another way to access the east side, so as we are trying to work, people are driving through. Not only is it annoying, it is dangerous. It's hard to hear when you are standing right by a mixer that is running, so if they aren't paying attention when they drive through, they might just run you down :( Not to mention it is absolutely no fun at all to be holding a big float with 18 feet of handles on it and have some jerk whack the end of the handles as they drive by. Inconsiderate boors!

This project is two colors, which is a monumental pain in the ass, especially considering the colors - Brick red and cream. It is possible to fix the cream on the red, but if you get red on the cream, you're screwed. There is a red cobblestone border around the entire edge of the slab, with strips through the ends on both sides. The color we use is a dry powder that is thrown on the surface and troweled in while the concrete is wet. You really should try this yourself, especially when the wind is blowing 30 mph. There is much swearing while doing this. This pour is sort of hour glass shaped, so the centers are curved, which requires all of this to be colored by hand, since the shield we use will not bend. This means more of my most dreaded activity, crawling on my hands and knees. Also, because of the curve, all of the cobblestones had to be cut in by hand. I got to do this. Yay! er..not. While I am doing this, DH and the helper are finishing the big cream colored fields. Fortunately, for us, the fields are just colored and broomed, and are not stamped. We would have been in real trouble if they had been stamped. Between all the hand work, and the damn wind, we barely got done in time. This is what people in the concrete business call "getting your ass kicked". As it was, it was a 13 hour day, with about 5 hours of crawling for me. With only 3 people on the crew, we were whupped puppies by the end of the day.

While we were cleaning up the tools and loading them in the van, there was a crew of hoodlums, er landscape workers, getting the area behind the curbs ready for sod. They watched us finish the last of the concrete, and were there while we were loading up our tools. They had moved a bit up the road by the time we left, so we figured our slab would be safe. **WRONG** Some one of those asshats went back and walked on the wet concrete with his gunboats, leaving some definite footprints. A fossil leaf now and then doesn't bother most people, but distinctly modern sneaker tracks don't fly. If I could get those jerks all together, and match up the footprint to some one's shoe, I would be kicking some one's ass. Unfortunately, we probably couldn't get them all down there, and the one that was missing would be the culprit. Ah the hazards of concrete.

I don't have pictures yet. My camera batteries were too low to take any. I will try to remember to get some next time we go out.

Looks like a jungle floor....

We finished the patio today. I used 3 different colors to highlight the leaves. We decided to highlight about five percent of the leaves, since there were so many. If we had done every single one, we'd have been there for days. Not to mention my knees, which are muttering at me now, despite a dose of ibuprophen. I am a weenie. My knees and worse, my back, do NOT appreciate it when I crawl around on the concrete. Thank goodness I don't have to do it often. Anyway, here are a few pictures of the job.

Here are my tools for tinting. Very technical huh? I only wish I had thought to bring a smaller paint brush. Some of the leaves could have used a more delicate touch, but oh well.



Here is a native maple leaf done in walnut brown. I love these colors together. Nicely muted.

This shows one leaf in each color I used. The colors are basically a wash. I wanted to keep the translucent qualities of a stain, without all the rinsing and scrubbing involved, so I used concrete color instead. It's possible to make nice variations using different strengths of color mix. This whole slab is pretty monochrome. We added a green this time instead of just rust and brown. I kind of like the green. It was very difficult for me to get good pictures. This patio is totally in the shade most of the day, so the colors don't pop like they would in the sun, but at least you can get an idea.

I think I am most pleased with this particular leaf. The color was translucent enough to be able to see some of the brown and cream beneath the green. I am very happy with the look. It makes me want to reach down and pick it up. You can see the detail better on the larger version. When the sealer hit it, it just jumped out off the slab. YAY!

I wish there was some good way to light this patio. It is difficult to show the true colors. The antherium leaf is terracotta, and the two ficus leaves to the right are walnut brown.

This is another of the weird ones that jump out at you instead of looking impressed. Crazy huh?

Man, I really love this one. I wouldn't mind a whole patio with just maple leaves. We have a bunch of different ones, including some huge Washing State Maple leaves that are fantastic. We pulled the texture off of the actual leaves, and the washingtons are enormous. I am not kidding. We have I think 4 and they start at sixteen inches and go to over twenty five. We had someone send us some fresh leaves and were laughing when the box was delivered. It was way bigger than we thought it should be... How many did they send, a *thousand*??? They sent about ten, and we were shocked when we saw them. Here are a couple of the stamps, along with the two stamps we used on this patio.The top and bottom leaves were made from maple trees in our yard, and are the ones we used for this job. Some day I will go to Washington and see the size of a tree that can make a leaf that size. I can't even imagine it.

Monk's Awaaaay...'cause Blondie said so!

What a cute little fuzzball :)

Super Monk! He thinks he is very brave... until someone bigger barks!

Here comes trouble for sure!

My gosh, can you imagine how obnoxious I would be if I had actual human offspring. Sheesh!

There is nothing better in this world than a good dog. Well, maybe a good horse, but a good dog is a wonderful thing. I have a good dog. His name is Monkey, and he's is a mini Aussie. This dog is incredibly smart. He learns so fast it's scary. I got him as a companion for my pretty princess Blondie. He is a cheerful, happy dog. He loves to play with his Wham-a-Ham. That is a sort of frisbee like toy that Bill has attached to a rope. You swing it around in circles and Monk chases it. He will do this for hours. It's a good game for him. He is also a coward. He will bark at the dogs that live behind us, and if they bark back, he runs to hide behind us. He is hilarious. Big hairy chicken.

He loves chasing the walking pole. He is addicted to chasing anything that moves. He is a fast little booger too. He gets so involved in the chase that he will run right into you. He smooth knocked me off my feet while we were Wham-A-Hamming one evening... I brace for impact now :)
Doesn't he look like a little swine in this picture? There is Blondie the Enforcer for size reference.

His favorite game at the office is to bark at the people dropping their dogs off at the grooming/kennel across the street. He thinks he is so fierce. Coward :-)

This is his favorite place at the shop. We have two huge piles of dirt. He zooms back and forth up one and down the other. It is rich when he wipes out. He looks around to see if anyone saw him. Here he is pretending to be the Aussie Backhoe. He's a busy boy!



HAHA! He likes to play PeekABoo too.

He peeks around corners, rocks, whatever. If he sees you he does this:



He is a good dog. We like him a lot :)

Blondie's name is Debbie Harry, but screaming Debbie Harry at the top of your lungs at 3am is not effective or efficient, so it's Blondie for short. Blondie is not really pretty. She is a French Bulldog, and I believe they used a portrait of her as a model for the Grinch who Stole Christmas. She even had the little tooth sticking out on the bottom, but the vet pulled it. I was emotionally damaged... it ruined her profile ;) Monkey is terrified by Blondie. He is so afraid of her that he will refuse to enter a room if she is in it. He will not get in the truck if she is already there. She is a micro terrorist of the highest skill. Because of her facial conformation, it is impossible for her to bite him, but there is a whole lotta bitch loaded into that tiny body! She is very fierce, and won't hesitate to jump on any dog that she deems unworthy to breathe her air. Mostly, she has issues due to being dumped/abandoned and starved. She is all about food. You better not even think of touching her food (if you're a dog) or she will take you out! Food is serious business!

Who wouldn't love this Moosh? What a great face.

Jabbette the Pup is surveying her domain. She rules with an iron paw. Hey you Hooligan! You'd better run boy!

Here she is getting ready to open a can of whup ass on Monkey. She believes it is her mission to rid the earth of him. He laughs in her face and runs away, but one of these days, he will wait too long!

I thought I told you to move along sonny!

Ruling the world is hard work. She is curled up under my desk snoring. A word to the wise. French Bulldogs are *the* cutest dogs in the world. They also snort, fart (OMG do they fart), snore like a chainsaw, and they are greedy. Other than that, who could resist this cuddly adorable cutie face???