There was a cloud of dread at Fab-Slab-Studio… that all the colors we would see emanated from a medium gray bagged concrete base.
Even our most fabulous chocolate brownie slabs for David K, in the end… came out looking cocoa gray. Don’t get me wrong… they are elegant and beautiful… as David would say “dressy”, but still in the grays….
After 1000’s of pounds of mixed concrete, it was tough… foreseeing gray forever into our future.
Then came other trouble in paradise!
A lack of control over our color consistancy from bag to bag (and supply problems) forced our hands.
We had to make our own concrete from scratch… nothing too new to mankind.
Here is a short history of concrete from Wikipedia.
Concrete (depending on your information source, and objectives) is make up roughly of 1 part portland cement, 2 parts aggregate (stone, glass, seashells what have you), and 3 parts sand.
The really good news… once you start making your own concrete the color options broaden tremendously.
Jim and I went on a exploratory mission to Harrin’s Sand and Gravel Co. here in Asheville.
What you see here are the scratch ingredients of our new concrete alternatives.
White portland and gray portland cement. White sand, orange sand (white sand combined with red clay), grey sand (crushed granite). White tumbled stone, red river stone, and gray granite gravel.
These are probably only interesting to us, but the possibilities they provide somebody “into” color are huge!
Here are some new samples we quickly brewed up… the imaginations doors are opening back up!
Most of what you see below are simply inherent differences of our cements, gravels, and sands put together in combinations to create different “base” colors. A few of the samples below have added “buff” powdered colorant . To quote from from Wikipedia….Buff is a pale yellow-brown colour that got its name from the colour of buffalo leather.
2 Comments
June 26, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Looking good! I like the two on the left and the kind of greenish one in the back row second from the left.
June 26, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Hey Billy – we went to the restaurant you recommended in Woodfin – Curras something – and it was fabulous! Thanks for the idea. See you in a few days!
Lynne