Not Just for the Cement Pond: Custom Concrete Can Bring Oceans, Glaciers, and Colors into Your Home

Looking for a versatile, durable, sustainable, cost effective material for a custom furniture or remodeling project? Something trendy that can fit into a traditional style home, too?  Concrete, yes, concrete can fit the bill.  As Amy Burger observes in her recent article, “Concrete Offers Many Creative Uses for the Home,” for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, concrete isn’t just for driveways and industrial spaces anymore.  Concrete has found its way into interior design for everything from countertops, vanities, flooring, and more.

At CustomMade, we’ve known building with concrete is a hot trend in contemporary design for over a year.  Take a look at some more examples of the projects and looks our CustomMade makers have achieved in the medium of concrete.

“After 35 years of the construction business, we simply like to play with pretty concrete,” says artisan Shawn Wardall of Specialized Construction Services, Inc.  You can see some very pretty concrete floors that feature stunning colors and designs on his recent projects gallery page.  Shawn researches the latest methods of coloring concrete through dyes and reactive stains to create unique, distinctive floors.  He can also incorporate images, borders, and logos of your choice into the design.  His colors and designs don’t cover the concrete; they are part of the concrete.  If you have a vision for a concrete floor, contact Shawn and have him bring it to life.

Recent Projects by Specialized Construction Services, Inc., at CustomMade.com

Concrete and rolling waves of water might seem quite dissimilar at first, but this vanity named “La Marea Brava” was designed by Jonathan Haywood of EPIC Concrete “to resemble a heavy wave at its peak, just before it breaks” and inspired by his time spent in Costa Rica learning how to surf and manipulate concrete.  The connection is not so strange.  After all, Jonathan reminds us, concrete in its infancy flows, too.  The vanity is also a testament to concrete’s possibilities and a challenge to its popular perception – “the dust, the blandness, the coldness.”  This organic shape was created with a new fabric molding technique.  How should you think of concrete when you’re trying to visualize a new design?  Concrete is “a wild material that is best when guided toward a specific end,” writes Jonathan, “and then left to do whatever it wants to do. The old adage, ‘If you love something, set it free,’ may have been talking about concrete.” The result will be a unique piece, sustainably and locally created, that will be in your family for generations.  Ready to take the plunge (and not just into the same old cement pond)?  Contact EPIC Concrete and discuss your ideas.

"La Marea Brava" Vanity by EPIC Concrete at CustomMade.com

Water in other forms is an inspiration for Bohemian Stoneworks founder Patrick Miller’s concrete designs.  Raw concrete’s “subtle nuances of mineral deposition and drift” remind him of patterns left by alpine streams and glacial flows he’s observed in nature.  Just like water and ice can wear down and carry tiny pebbles and stones, concrete gives you the opportunity to create one-of-a-kind surfaces for your furniture with mixed-in elements like bits of glass, metals, stones, and other materials.  The concrete café table shown here includes bits of actual glass along with a lively bottle design on the tabletop.  The Bottle Art Series of concrete surfaces

combines pieces of glass with interesting contours of bottles sliced through a variety of planes.  Unlike typical recycled glass, which has to be melted down with chemical processing that employs precious resources, the glass we employ is hand selected for each project and remains in its original state until used.  The surfaces in this series have an artful allure that lends itself beautifully to tabletops and wine bars.

Contact Patrick if you’re interested in the Bottle Art Series or in a custom concrete design of your own.

"Bottle Art Series" Concrete Café Table by Bohemian Stoneworks at CustomMade.com

Take a look at this concrete, steel, and reclaimed wood desk by Elements Concrete.  Can you spot the concrete?

Concrete, Steel, and Reclaimed Wood Desk by Elements Concrete at CustomMade.com

The 2” thick hand-troweled concrete desktop blends seamlessly with the reclaimed barnwood and steel in this fascinating piece.  The desktop even sports a steel bird inlay design on the corner.  In the hands of Jerrad Inlow, concrete can make beautiful music with steel and wood in your custom furniture and can take on whatever shape and appearance you’d like.  Share your design inspiration with Jerrad.

Inlay Detail for the Concrete, Steel, and Reclaimed Wood Desk by Elements Concrete at CustomMade.com

Have a concrete idea? Whether it’s set in stone or still in a liquid state, post it on our “Get it Made” job board and have CustomMade artisans with expertise in this protean medium contact you.