surface preparation
An Interview with Alison Terry, Dave Penton & Jimmy Reed by Jim McCloskey The project under discussion here is one I've followed for several years. I first visited the site with Jimmy Reed, a tile-installation specialist based in Calabasas, Calif., as part of a day-long tour of some of his favorite completed projects as well as a few in progress. At that point, the work on this pool was complete, but nothing substantial had yet been done with the spa, which wasn't even part of our conversation. The second time I saw the backyard was several months later: I was on a similar ride-around with pool contractor
In our usual run of business as installers of stone and tile in and around New York City, we can get involved in projects that take years to complete and involve us in applying tens of thousands of square feet of material within or onto a single high-rise building. In some of these projects, a pool or spa comes as part of the package, but they tend to be such small parts of the overall picture that it's fairly tough to focus on them. This was not the case, however, in our work on the renovation of the swimming pool and spa in the historic Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan. When it opened in 1913, this was the tallest skyscraper on the city's skyline and held that distinction for 17 years. For a time, it was the
There's no denying the fact that, after many years of hard work, my company enjoys a solid and perhaps unmatched reputation for being able to approach perfection in the application of fine tile to the interiors of pools and spas. As I see it, we're all about discipline and mental energy - that is, the training and raw skill that goes into applying sheet after sheet of tile with precision as well as the level of concentration required to
If I've learned anything through the years, it's that a successful, truly satisfying project generally requires a good client and, quite often, a great project team. What the good client was after in the project discussed here was pretty simple - that is, an oval-shaped pool to go along with a large, oval-shaped shade structure another contractor was to install alongside it. Making a fine start, the client called in Skip Phillips of
Many of the projects we work on could best be classified as show-stoppers: big, elaborate installations with undulating surfaces, multiple planes intersecting at odd angles and elaborate mosaic patterns - interior finishes with a level of technical difficulty that makes lots of tile applicators head in the other direction at a rapid clip. We at Rock Solid Tile (Calabasas, Calif.) enjoy just that sort of technical challenge. It's why we invest so much time in training, take our work so seriously and keep expanding the range of what we can accomplish for our clients. But truth be told, we occasionally like tackling installations where
Very often these days, we're a pre-selected contractor and get involved in projects early enough that we participate in their development almost from inception. That's great, because it gives us the opportunity to define what needs to happen to make the most of the glass-tile finishes we're frequently asked to install. In this case, however, another contractor had the first shot at the job, which involved extensive work on an unusual vanishing-edge pool as well as an innovative spa and a nice little waterfeature. Long story short, that other company had apparently never
It happens only rarely, but every once in a while you run into a client who wants to do things out of sequence. Most often, we're asked to work on projects where there's an existing home that needs a watershape. Just as commonly, we're brought in when a home is being built at the same time as a new pool and its associated environment. In the case described in this article, however, our client owned a 20-acre site with little more than
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
Devising an approach to the application of fields of glass tile to complex surfaces is never simple, but when your goal is to do so while minimizing cuts and eliminating any visual "tics" that might stand out like sore thumbs when the work is done? That's taking the work to a whole different level. The project under discussion here, built in Gilbert, Ariz., offered this sort of challenge twice - once in a large entryway waterfeature, and again in the backyard with an outsized
