Made in China
World of Concrete artists take their talent overseas
Source: Concrete Construction Online
Publication date: August 16, 2007

In 2005, Scott Hogue and Dave Blasdel were part of a group of concrete finishers who took their passion for decorative concrete to China.

The job consisted of microtopping and stenciling for a new performing arts center in a small town 30 miles north of Beijing. But what makes this job different was its size. The work involved multiple passes over 80,000 square feet of concrete.

The arts center is part of an ambitious entertainment complex modeled after Beijing's Forbidden City. However, this version–measuring 2 to 3 square miles in size–will include a waterpark, a golf course, bowling alleys, hotels, and other amenities to take advantage of the expected boom in tourism surrounding the 2008 Summer Olympics.

The crew started on the main floor of the performing arts center, building off a hard-troweled concrete surface, measuring about 60,000 square feet. The crew put down Brickform's Micro-Topping, a polymer-modified cementitious overlay. The first pass was a rough coat, followed by two smooth coats.

"Because supplies were difficult to obtain, we had to hand trowel to entire thing, instead of using typical squeegee techniques," Hogue said.

The size of the job also required that they work from side to side on the big open floor. Each pass, integrally colored red, had a thickness of 1/4 to 3/16 of an inch.

"We were really cranking," Hogue said. "Sometimes we got as much as 36,000 square feet done in a day. Though, sometimes we ran out of microtopping before the end of the day, and had to wait until more of it cleared customs."

Hogue also said the Chinese were amazed at the size of the trowels the crew used. "We had standard 20-inch Marshalltown trowels, but the Chinese normally used only 8-inch trowels. They did say, though, that their smaller tools gave them bigger muscles."

In addition, the Chinese don't work on their knees. They squat, Blasdel said.

After the microtopping was put down, the client asked that they polish the surface. "However, the only tool we could find in town was a 20-inch polisher. That part of the job took a week," he said.

After wet polishing the surface down to a 600 grit, they laid out a large design at the center of the floor with stencils, followed by coloring with Brickform's opaque cementitious colorant, Cem-Coat.

Another part of the job included resurfacing a concrete deck area on the roof, called the Air Garden, also done with microtopping, and some acid staining. Here they cut a compass rose measuring almost 50 feet across using a Mongoose engraving machine from Engrave-A-Crete.

In all, the crew of five took 30 days to complete the work. "We were either working flat out, as fast as we could, or sitting around and waiting," Hogue said.

"In many ways, it was like working at home; our biggest challenge was working around other trades. But, the difficulties with customs and the lack of many other supplies were problems. We had to make do with what we had. It gives me a better appreciation for what we have here," he said. "But, it was still a lot of fun. I'd go back again."

"Culturally, it was very different," Blasdel said. "Now that we know what to expect, there are so many things we can teach them."

Hogue, a fifth-generation concrete finisher from Spokane, Wash., owns Artistic Concrete Surfaces. Blasdel owns Blaze's Concrete Impressions in Kalispell, Mont. Their work at this year's Artistry in Decorative Concrete in Las Vegas at World of Concrete was memorable. They built a concrete tiki bar, complete with bamboo and barnacles.