The Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center

This is where we are working rignt now. We have a little over 14,000 square feet of stampwork to do here. Fortunately for Bill and I, the company we subbed the job from is actually pouring it out for us. Since Bill and I are the only ones on our crew who can actually finish concrete, this is a big help for us as straight edging is a butt-ton of work.

The architect had a great concept for this job. The paving is actually dark gray, almost black, and white. The white sidewalks run through our black imprint and it will look really neat...for about 3 days. For some silly reason, he did not specify a sealer for the white concrete, which means that every time a car drives over it there will be tire marks. Soon, it will be dull gray anywhere there is auto traffic. The white concrete is really white. It has white cement, sand and aggregate. It supposedly also has oyster shells included in the mix. It is incredibly expensive at almost $200 a yard. It sure is pretty coming out of a mixer though.

Here are some pictures!

This is the white sidewalk. Not a great picture, I will do better later. We are making some fairly large pours on this project. The tools we are using allow us to do much larger areas than the tools with joints. It's pretty nice to get large chunks out of the way, instead of doing a bazillion small pours. YAY!!!

This job is full of difficulties. The bollard run though the middle of our pours. That means that we have to work around them and let me tell you, troweling at a distance, around something is a challenge. Bill actually made a stamp that fits right around the bollards, so stamping is easy. He's the bomb! The bollards are actually the traffic control devices for this big drive. Every other one has a light in it. Bill and I both anticipate them being knocked over pretty quickly. It will make a mess of our work. Oh well :)

This is the pour we filled in last Friday. We had to go back and cover it with curing blankets since it was dropping into the 20's that night. The wind was gusting to over 40mph. I know this because I was standing on one of the curing blankets and it flat picked us both up and surfed us over the slab and I know that it takes at least a 40 mph wind to blow my fat ass around. I was not amused. I finally had to get down on my hands and knees to keep from being blown away. Did I mention that the wind chill was in the teens?? Well it was. I fricking hate the wind. You can see the white sidewalk a bit better here.

This is the texture the architect chose. It is a ripple slate. It's kind of a subtle texture that is very pedestrian/handicap friendly. Here, it is still covered with release, so you can't actually see the color which is a sort of silvery charcoal gray if that makes sense.

I am hoping that I will be able to get inside and take some pictures of this after we are finished. I think it is going to be very attractive once it's done. Now it looks like a puzzle that isn't finished.