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Using Feng Shui to Embody Your Inspiration
Who inspires you, who makes you envious? The answers will help you design your life! If there's someone who inspires you, or someone you envy - that is your heart giving you a clue as to what you want more of in your life. These questions will...
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SPIDER JONES: Heavyweight Champion of Inspiration
Young Charles ‘Spider’ Jones was a boy with a dream. He wanted to be like his idol, Alan Freed, the disc jockey credited with coining the phrase ‘Rock & Roll’. Spider was out-going, friendly, and optimistic, possessing the desire to achieve his...
The inspirational Power Of A Golf Training Video
Many golf training videos in the market today will show you in great detail, how some of the PGA professionals do it and the so-called secrets behind their success. From detailed specifics on why their playing techniques are so effective, to the...
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Why Read Inspirational Quotes?
Maybe you've heard this one: "What does it profit a man to have gained the whole world, and to have lost his soul?" - Jesus Christ Inspirational quotes and sayings from the present day or centuries past, can inspire and instruct us. This is true...
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Inspirational Ideas For Using Concrete In Your Home
Concrete is an extraordinary material that is practical, expressive, and aesthetic all at once. From a primal and formless slurry, you can transform it into virtually any shape that becomes a solid mass. The possibilities for creative expression are endless. You can grind, polish, stamp, or stain it. You can embed meaningful objects within it.
Concrete has substance and mass, permanence and warmth. It feels earthy, and is at home in both traditional and modern settings. It assumes forms that irrevocably touch our daily lives-bridges, highways, floors, walls... even countertops. Concrete is also surprisingly tactile. Cast and shaped, it can feel like stone rounded by the sea. Textured and colored, it can echo the patina of timeworn tile.
It first occurred to me to make a countertop out of concrete in 1985, when a friend and I were hired to design and renovate a professor's house in the Berkeley Hills. He gave us a modest budget and announced, "This is all I can afford to spend; do whatever you want." Armed with this rare creative license (and plenty of youthful exuberance) we aimed to be as innovative as possible.
This invitation to imagine, play, and explore inevitably led me to experiment in my own kitchen, where concrete and I began what is now our nearly two-decade dance. My first countertop was a single piece containing 11 cubic feet of concrete. It weighed nearly 1500 pounds and took 10 people-and 2 engine hoists-to turn it over once it had cured. We barely managed it, but the piece came out beautifully and is still being put to good use
today.
Because of its adaptability, concrete finds itself welcome in all areas of the home, especially in the kitchen and bath, but also in fireplaces, patios, garden paths, or water features. Concrete can also be used as a floor material with enormous creative advantages whether seeded, stained, stamped, broomed or diamond-finished. It can be a sole performer or play the supporting role to tile, mosaics, decorative aggregates, stone, wood, or metal. It is inexpensive, durable, noncombustible, impervious to decay, and also very effective for passive solar gain in the right application.
With vertical treatments, concrete gives us an opportunity to recapture some of the feeling of the monolithic wall-the feeling of substance, of protection. Walls are also a great place to explore form. A wall doesn't have to be flat or straight, but can curve and undulate. It can be textured to be rough as stone or smooth as glass.
Surrender to the impulse... carve your initials in concrete.
About the Author: Fu-Tung Cheng, the founder of the Cheng Concrete Exchange, is an internationally known designer and author, who has pioneered the craft of making concrete countertops. To learn more about the endless possibilities of using concrete in your home, visit his website at http://www.ConcreteExchange.com
Source: www.isnare.com
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