Vol. 15 No. 5 - July 2015

Dan Sawatzky’s background doesn’t immediately lend itself to him becoming a premier concrete artisan, but his creativity with concrete has led him to work that is far outside of the norm. Sawatzky’s Imagination Corporation is a backyard business run by father and son.

New Iberia, Louisiana, located 130 miles from New Orleans, has an elevation of only 20 feet. Wood floors are fine, but in this area prone to flooding, concrete floors are even better. And Keefe Duhon of Concrete Revolution has developed a specialty of concrete floors that look like wood planks, and he’s become known for it across the country.

There is a famous paperback called “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. Many writers treasure it as a guide to writing clearly and succinctly while avoiding common grammatical errors. The handbook itself is a model of clarity.

Curing is an integral part of the concrete placement process. When portland cement and water mix, they activate a process called “hydration.”

Question: The last two times I have acid stained existing, untreated, basement concrete floors, I’ve unintentionally created footprints in the acid stain finish. I didn’t create them by walking across the wet stain, as I always use spiked sandals when I apply stain.

Stenciling is so much quicker is that all work can be done from outside the forms using long-handled tools. The pattern is provided by the stencils, and texturing may be accomplished with lightweight textured rollers.

Emily McCloskey, the young wife of attorney and Irish immigrant Henry Harrison McCloskey, had grown deathly afraid of earthquakes after the “great earthquake” of San Francisco and the subsequent fire that killed 500 people and left 220,000 homeless in 1906.

“The house looked a lot like a barn,” says Wells, 36, owner of Wells Concrete Works in Los Osos, California. “The clients kept some of the old architecture and appliances and fixtures inside and out. With the outside kitchen they wanted to be able to come back from the beach and entertain lots of people.”

Here, the Concrete Decor staff shares its top 10 favorite out-of-the-ordinary concrete creations that were featured or almost featured in the past 99 issues. The thin-shell pavilion and fabric-formed planter tied for first place, while the faux bois sconce and slippers tied for second.

Concrete is a remarkable material with origins stretching back to antiquity. Concrete and its primary ingredient, cement, have changed a lot over the years, but the following timeline helps bring the history of this important material into the present day.

Of all the lists we compiled for this special issue, this one was probably the hardest. It wasn’t because there were so few good jobs to choose from — quite the opposite.

We took a look at the most-read articles from our archives, and this list gives a unique picture of what information interests our readers the most.

How could we narrow down the numerous influential people in the industry to just 10? It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. Our list is by no means all-inclusive, but here are brief profiles of 10 people we think continue to influence the decorative concrete industry in a positive way. Who should we have included? Sound off at our Facebook page.

If your business is operating smoothly, you may not think some of the things you do every day have contributed to your success because they seem so basic. But when you encounter a business that doesn’t do some of these fundamental things, you may discover how important simple day-to-day acts and decisions are.

Decorative concrete artisans are not only a creative bunch. They also are quick to figure out if there’s a better way to do something. Some of our top 10 noteworthy products from recent years are about more-efficient production while others involve cool technology that we hope will soon make its way into the forefront of daily work.

Of the Concrete Decor Show’s top 35 most-attended courses, some topics emerged that were more popular than all the others. First on the list are countertops, followed by polymer overlays and coatings, and polishing concrete.

From day one, we put a lot of thought into the covers for each issue of Concrete Decor magazine. Because it isn’t available on newsstands, we don’t have to try to appeal to the average grocery shopper standing in line, but we definitely want our cover images to be attention-grabbing.

Not everything we write or receive ends up in Concrete Decor. We have a section on the website for “Online Exclusives,” things that we don’t have space for in the magazine but are too good not to share.