Richard Holdschuh, an artist in concrete, talks about counters

Richard Holdschuh is a visionary. His Brattleboro Vermont company, Concrete Detail , is one of the leading purveyors of concrete counters in the country. Their custom work is easily the most thoughtful and precise concrete work I've ever seen. I met Richard through Twitter a few weeks ago and I learned that not only is he the soul of those amazing counters, he's also a heck of a guy.

I don't write enough about concrete counters and I asked Richard to put something together for me to start to rectify my lapse. He did. You can learn more about Richard and his company through their website, Concrete Detail . Feel free to ask him any questions in the comments section and I'll forward everything to him. Maybe we'll get him to come back to answer some of them personally. So without further ado, here's Richard.

Concrete started out out without a doubt as an alternative to wood, in my mind. Having been in creation as a wood worker for twenty years, I changed into searching out a way of transferring in a distinct path: to apply a number of what I already knew - to go to locations I had best dreamed about. Being a chippie in Vermont (in conjunction with 1/2 the population) regularly involves straddling a roof 35 ft off the ground at 20 tiers F (comfortable) or chipping a 1/2 inch of ice off your framing lumber so that you can build a wall (relatively productive) or being attentive to testimonies of ultimate night time?S fight on the bar (heartwarming). Notice a subject right here? Suffice it to say, I idea I should do higher.

I searched for a trade, craft or product that may construct upon the skillset I had evolved and permit me a creative outlet which have been neglected considering the fact that I became an awful lot more youthful. If it changed into internal a heated, organized keep with different like-minded innovative kinds, it would be almost too suitable to be authentic. And so, after a lot studies and soul-looking, the solution (for me) turned out to be what we within the commercial enterprise consult with as ?Artisan concrete?. What is that, you might ask? And rightly so, due to the fact it is still a fledgling industry going via many adjustments even because it starts to find its region the various more conventional substances. Happily, the media and design professionals inside the US are now paying greater attention to this upstart and consequently public focus is reaching a tipping point.

The poster baby for artisan concrete is the hand made countertop and this is the majority of our paintings at Concrete Detail, which is the business enterprise born of my quest. We create custom tops for kitchens and baths, a lot of which encompass sinks as well; we also layout and fabricate hearth and bath surrounds, furnishings, wall panels, tiles, bar tops, vessels, and plenty more. Concrete Detail brings the project complete circle, from consultation and layout, to fabrication and installation. We experience the intimate collaboration with our clients as an crucial part of the technique of gratifying a fee ? Which brings us to the motives for deciding on concrete as a surfacing option.

Concrete counter tops are, at the least in our interpretation, surprisingly functional aesthetic furnishings ? We name it Artformed TM. Not rarefied, subjective collector?S gadgets, however tough-working and deeply pleasant necessities. Every domestic wishes a countertop and anybody wants to make their domestic their own; the medium of concrete permits personal expression without design constraint, all of the even as meeting the demands of regular life with sturdiness, versatility, and sustainability (at a totally aggressive price). Today?S excessive overall performance concrete has little or no to do with a cracked sidewalk and the whole lot to do with lasting layout within the fingers of a master artisan. We make use of these capabilities to invest the concrete with soul: captured within the completed pieces are the craftsman, the dweller, and their surroundings. When the completed factors are delivered and brought into their meant locations, they belong ? Because they have been consciously made for that individual and location on my own. This is the essence of suitable layout.