We were asked to make a black concrete fireplace surround for a beautiful house on Lake Harriet. Each concrete panel was ½” thick and we made three black concrete panels and installed those. As this fireplace surround was black on black, we did make some intentional pour lines to give it a very subtle textured look, though they were smooth to the touch. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see the final result after the TV was mounted but we got these photos!
The interior designer was also trying to find a large unique table for the house that would seat 10 people comfortably with large white chairs. We discussed many concrete table designs and traded sketches. We had a lot of ideas of artful concrete tables that resembled bridges or had some bridge architecture built into them. We discussed cable stayed bridge designs and making a table that would have a cable stay cantilever built into it. The homeowners decided that those designs were just not quite right for their home. Part of the design restraints was that we had to lift the table up the flight of steps and through the standard front door, there was no room to build a ramp so the table had to be built in pieces and assembled on site. Then we proposed a classic looking table with a black walnut middle wrapped with white concrete edges and white concrete legs.
At this time I was playing around with concrete art. The interior designer stated that the home owners might be interested in some art that resembled birch trees. I made 4 different concrete art pieces that were all black and white concrete. We brought those with us when we installed the table and let the home owners choose which pieces of art they liked the most.
We installed the concrete art using a French cleat design. Each concrete art piece weighed around 40-60 pounds. We truly love it when we can place multiple pieces of concrete that are all unique into one home! A black Concrete fireplace surround, a white concrete and black walnut table and black and white concrete art, what could be better?
