benches
Paramount Pool & Spa Systems (Chandler, AZ) makes the Parascope, a telescoping waterfeature that rises…
Even after years of operation in the tile-application business, we still find fresh challenges and new sources of pride in what we do. I think it's primarily because we spend so much of our time focusing on fine details - the little touches that turn routine work into creative exercises and repetitive tasks into ongoing sparks of inspiration. A case in point is the huge job on display in this article: The three watershapes encompass vast square footage that includes fields of
Stone Forest (Santa Fe, NM) now produces The Pebble Collection, a product line inspired by…
Lightstreams Glass Tile (Santa Clara, CA) makes Jewel Glass tiles for use in marking the…
When vinyl-liner pools first appeared more than half a century ago, they were offered as "standard" pools for middle-class consumers - plain, simple and relatively inexpensive compared to their concrete cousins. Back in the 1950s and '60s, these vinyl-liner packages had squared-off shapes, but as time passed and consumers demanded greater variety, models emerged with oval forms or Grecian-style ends; before long, there were kidney-shaped packages and even some
It’s not often that a watershaper tackles a job that takes more than two years of complete, full-time effort, but that’s been the case for the project pictured here. For nearly two and a half years, in fact, I devoted virtually all of my working life to this single backyard watershape environment, and as I’ve mentioned in previous articles, there were times when I wondered if I was crazy to get involved with a project of this scope. Indeed, to describe it simply as a “backyard watershape environment” is to fall miles short of conveying the complexity of the systems covered in two previous WaterShapes articles (“When Dreams Grow,” April 2008, click here; and “Layering the Experience,” July 2008, click here): It was a monster project, and there were times I thought the beast had me at a distinct disadvantage. You know all about that, of course, if you’ve followed this sequence of articles, so I won’t belabor the point. Here, we’ll wrap things up by letting the photographs tell most of the story – although I must say the images don’t quite
How do you define artistry? That’s a highly subjective question, of course, but I’ve always thought of it as a completed work that radiates impressions of insight, effort, skill and mastery — even in
When you work with any type of concrete, there are right and wrong ways to do things - basic issues of workmanship that really do determine whether a structure will be reliable or not. In the case of swimming pools and spas built using pneumatically applied concrete - either shotcrete or gunite - there's a presumption in structural design that the concrete will cure to the strength specified, which, in the case of pools and spas, is typically 2,000 pounds per square inch. If that's not the case, these structures do not meet their specifications and may be subject to failure as a result. To achieve that desired level of strength, the concrete must be
