Concrete coated with a decorative cement
finish.
First thing-The area
around the new concrete and the painted stucco was sealed
with roof patch. |
The new concrete
was left rough for a good bond for our finish. A bonding
coat is applied using flex-con half and half with water,
portland cement, and medium sand blasting sand. The sand blasting sand is used for strength. |
I edited my picture of a lamp with Paint shop
pro 7, which works fine in Linux using wine. I quit using
Microsoft Windows a few years ago and haven't looked back. |
The next step was to blow up my lamp using PosteRazor. Each rectangle represents a 8-1/2 by 11 sheet. |
I printed out my poster on heavy card stock and cut
out the pages. Here, I taped the pages together on a sheet
of plywood. |
The reason for the poster was to draw a
pencil outline of the lamp on our new basecoat. |
An outline for the lamp is taped off using,
what else ? Masking tape. |
After the mortar starts to set the tape is
pulled off and now we have a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path. |
Glass is packed down good as
Hazel looks on. |
Next, we taped off the border
before applying the rest of the finish. The border makes the
lamp stand out. |
The black
sand for the finish is "Black Beauty" which is a slag
product. The finish is the same as we use for stucco: 1 bag
white portland, one fourth bag of lime and 200 lbs. sand. |
The surface has a float
finish for traction. |
Tape
peeled off, leaving a border. |
Seventh
Day Adventist logo is done the same way. |
We sprayed the designs with 5 cans of heavy duty polyurethane. I know some of the glass will get knocked loose, but this should hold it real good. |
Crushing the glass left a fine powder in the bottom of the buckets. The powder is separated by pouring it back and forth into buckets and blowing the fine part away with a fan. I found out that you can buy crushed colored glass online already screened to size. Now I know that, we can save a huge amount of effort in the future. |
Now the church has an inviting entrance, and historically accurate as well. The black sand and white portland finish looks cool when it is wet, like the granite in the curbs in Capitol Hill. |