Thomaston Granite

  We have been terribly busy and awfully behind, so I haven't posted in a few weeks, but here are some before and after shots of the last project we finished. The job is another for Endeavour, in the back yard of a large old house in historic downtown Thomaston. I took some photos when I originally went to look at the job, and as you can see, it was badly cracked and pitching forward dangerously.

  I was struck immediately by the beauty of the place, however, and jumped at the opportunity to be a part of such a great restoration project.  The owner came out with an old cigar box she had found in the attic when she bought the place, inside of which were some black and white photographs of the original structure.

  Amazing! I wanted the job...
  Then my good friend, Don Savarice, who was doing some interior restoration, pointed out a circular iron and concrete structure in the center of the lawn.

  Apparently, when Don had started working on the house, there was a large pile of decaying wood in the back yard and the owner asked him if he could remove it. Well, he did and lo and behold, beneath it was this incredible ornate wrought-iron fountain base. Out of curiosity, they went into the basement and searched around until they found a mystery-knob, which they turned... And there was water! Right up out of the little fountain-spout. Incredible!
  I left the site determined to come back and rebuild the wall and sure enough, we were doing just that two or three weeks later.  It was a difficult project, due to the size of the stones and the height of the wall, but we managed. Actually, a massive hats-off to both Damon and Dave Curry, who were there much more than I was and built most of what you see in the pictures.

  I can't wait to see it again in another fifty years, when the vines have grown back.
 

Stonescapes

  Spent the last few weeks down in Freeport working with Kurt Snyder and Stonescapes building some granite walls. As always, Kurt is a pleasure to work with, and it was nice to work with Lance again, as well as Zack and Bija.

                                                              Damon and Lance...

                                                     Kurt and Lance's Fine Stonewall...

The Daily Street News

  Sixteen feet of retaining wall out of Guinea Ridge wallstone, which is basically yet another variation on the Heritage Valley, Belfast Heritage, Norumbega strain. It comes off of Guinea Ridge out in Burketville and is sold by the Pease family, who are probably the hardest working and most honest people I have ever dealt with. (Also can be found at Viking Hardscapes on Rt. 90.) I like it because it seems to have a good variety of thicknesses and we wanted to have some thinner ones for this smaller wall, so as to still have some movement across the face. If you build an eighteen-inch tall wall out of six-inch thick stones, you basically end up with a wall three rocks high, and it just doesn't look very exciting. This, on the other hand, this is exciting.

  Look at the colors, too. Actually, the rock is still pretty dirty from being in the ground and will weather well over time, decreasing the browns and bringing out the blues and greens.

  We even ripped out a few bricks that were under the fireplace, and replaced them with wallstone, which really integrated the whole structure and brought everything together.

  We did this job for Michael Geer of Celebration Works Carpentry (236-0030) and a customer of his from my home state of Tennessee. Yee-haw! She was really nice and Michael is a pleasure to work with. He's easy-going, with a boat-builder's eye to detail and a classic love of craftsmanship, and we are looking forward to working with him in the future.

High St. Wall Repair

  A little wall repair on High St. for Tim Massey of Endeavour Builders. (A link to their fine website on the left.)  The wall was apparently struck by an careening automobile a few years ago and so lay heaped in a pile rapidly overgrowing with cedar roots.  We pulled the whole thing apart, put down a substantial bed of crushed stone, as well as crushed stone and filter fabric behind. It should stand the test of time, barring any unforeseen acts of vehicular wall-slaughter.

Those Wonderful Spinneys

  I just want to say "thank you" to the Spinneys, the lovely family we worked for last week down in Boothbay. They couldn't have been more accommodating, helpful, friendly, or grateful. I leave jobs like that one (which are a true rarity) feeling like I should be paying them, instead of the other way around. It's only been a few days, and I miss them already. Thanks, guys.

  It was the wrong time of day to photograph wet bluestone, but you get the general idea. 75% of the patio was reusing the stones that had been there previously, which the owners cleaned with a pressure washer after we laid. Remarkably, one could not tell the difference between the old and new stones afterward.

  The retaining wall is a manufactured product called Verazzo Stone, which is incredibly easy to install and very strong as a finished unit.

  
  Spinney the Spider...

Hamburger Hill

  Last week, Mike Fitzgerald and I went up on the hill and finished off the last 30 feet or so of "Trigula's Great Wall of Horrors" for Paul Belcher of Midcoast Masonry.  It wouldn't have been so bad, except there was 30 feet left to do, complete with Oak Hill caps, and probably enough money left in the budget for 10. Needless to say, we broke our backs and managed to finish in a couple of days, so we didn't lose our shirts too bad. It came out nice, too.

 Here is another shot of the lower courtyard area, which was done two or three years ago.

Entomophobia

  Damon and I finished a handsome little 64 square-foot patio today in Camden for a wonderful couple from Texas. They really were a pleasure to work for and I now consider them not only customers, but friends and neighbors. They chose a great restoration brick, which I believe is a Montpelier Red, and a granite cobble border that brought the whole thing together nicely.

   It can go either way when a customer has the materials chosen and the design all laid out. It either makes our job easier and we just waltz in and put it all together, or it's a complete nightmare and nothing fits or matches and the project looks so horrible when we're done that my camera suddenly runs out of battery power and refuses to take web-shots.  These guys definitely belonged in the former category and even volunteered to help us dig.  It is truly the rewarding and pleasurable jobs such as this one that keep us going through tedious and difficult times that invariably arise in any of the trades.

 
  At one point today, we ran back to my house for some tools and I spotted this terrifying and beautiful event dangling over the truck...

  The cruelty and sadness of remarkable Life and Death struggles...

"Toulouse-Lautrec's Garden Trowel"

  I did this little sculpture-patio for a very sweet couple in Camden a few days ago. Nothing fancy, just something to define the piece and bring together with the sprawling hillside gardens, paths, and walls. The piece is entitled "Toulouse-Lautrec's Garden Trowel" and the artist's name is Amy (Something, I will find out what). It spins on its axis, which scared the living hell out of me the first time I bumped into it and sent it spinning.

The Start Center Walls/Aphrodite"s Gift

  Went over to The Start Center just down the road from my house and started building some walls with my good friends Ronald and Margaret, the actual "starters" of the Start Center, wherein they practice a form of healing know as RCT, or Re-Connective Therapy. You can read more about it at their website: http://thestartcenter.org  Meanwhile, here are some pictures:

  When, I went home for lunch, Laura told me to take in a look in the back yard and this is what I found:

   That's our Mews...

A Safe Landing

  Tom Potter of the Potter Building Company(207-595-3315), asked us to do a small landing patio at one of his jobsites a few weeks ago.

  Damon and I found some nice granite, Deer Isle, I believe; and we added a few cobbles in the corner to create a raised bed for planting.

  Here are a few shots of our friend and stone sculptor, Dave Curry (who also has scuptures at Harbor Square Gallery in Rockland now) thermalling the final slab of granite before installation. Thermalling uses high temperatures to flake and pop off the outer layer of a stone, giving it a rougher and more natural appearance. It can be a touchy process, however, and if the stone is too thin or weak or has hidden fissures it can spit into pieces and be rendered completely useless. This particular stone was our last piece and there didn't seem to be any left in the midcoast, which meant we would have had to have Josh at Rockport Granite fabricate a piece just for us literally out of a mountainside, so needless to say, we splashed alot of cold water on it while Dave worked, and we held our breath...