We had a little bit of a crisis regarding the concrete coping and deck which has taken up most of the week. Long story short, there were supposed to be lots of blue-gray colors (similar to bluestone) for us to choose from for the pour. It turns out, there are not. Blue is the elusive unicorn of the concrete world, in fact one concrete place told me they have to ship actual cobalt in from Africa to create the pigment (that is a bit of a stretch I find, I found a supplier that had some synthetics or compounds closer to OKC than Africa, but you get the idea of the type of push-back we were getting). I found a plain gray that we might use but will need lots of hand-tinting to make it acceptable to me and not look like regular old cement - what's the point of coloring and stamping it if it looks like regular concrete?
PB wants to meet to discuss this as he was not planning to do that much hand-tint work (it is very labor intensive), even though our contract does specify that the concrete will be hand-tinted with 2-3 colors and joints will be grouted. Do not want to cause a major rift over this discrepancy with the scope of work, and since the problem is the base color isn't great, I keep looking for a better base color to limit the amount of after-pour coloring we need to have. We finally found a supplier with a range of TWO blue colors suitable for addition to gray concrete (evidently some pigments are designated to work with white concrete, some with gray, or perhaps they are the same pigments but look different when added to different bases), but the cost is exorbitant, on the order of $31/lb premium colorant as opposed to $5/lb for the regular tones. That prompted a whole 'nother round of discussion, which consisted of trying to find ways to make it work at a cost that was doable - obviously, when PB quoted our price he had not planned on paying 6x as much as normal for the colorant. As a starting point, supplier told me the premium required 10/lbs/yard, so $310/yard vs $50/yard, and we need probably 18 yards, so choices of either $1000 or $6000 for just the colorant. Ouch! Let's go back to looking at real bluestone!
The supplier had two suggestions, one was to pour plain concrete for the 4" base and then do an overlay with the premium colored concrete. PB strongly discourages overlays, says they do not last and he will not do it. I tend to agree, if we could have overlayed we wouldn't have ripped out 1,000 sf of existing concrete deck, ya know.
Option two was to pour 3" base plain gray, immediately pour final 1" with premium color, reducing premium needed to 25% of the full pour. This seemed better for a myriad of reasons, but PB has never done this before. Lots and lots of discussion with supplier and PB, misinformation flying all over the place, depending on who answered the phone at the supplier. Finally, we meet with PB and all the samples and it turns out it is a moot point because the colors are more of a crayola blue and won't work for us anyway! Argh!
I am trying to be mindful of a recently locked thread as I type this, and while it was certainly never reached that level of contentiousness, it was an uncomfortable meeting but ultimately it ended well. Although we had tried to spell out everything we wanted very clearly by stating each step in the contract, there are evidently still some areas that are open to interpretation. My advice to anyone reading this in the future is to use quantifiable measurements whenever possible (percentages of hand-tinted colors, for example - 65% of deck hand-tinted with up to 3 individual acetone colors,) in the language of the contract to be crystal clear on the expectations, and even attach photos of samples to the contract and make them addenda to the contract - a visual is sometimes much more clear than the language can be. I wish we had actually picked every item (every color, tile, profile, etc) prior to writing the contract because of the domino effect each decision has on the others - if we can't get a blue-gray stamped deck, do we want a bluestone retaining wall any more? If we don't have a bluestone wall, does the tile that is already on the pool look good? Things like that. I can see I will never build a custom home because the amount of minute decisions required just in this pool build are so numerous!
But I digress. Ultimately, the PB wants us happy and we want him to continue with our project, even though he offered to tally up where we are now to let someone else take over. We had a very frank discussion about each of our expectations and where we are in the project (does everyone reach this point in a project like this? It felt a bit like therapy) and yesterday was the projected date of completion. We do not want someone else, we just want the project completed the way we discussed. I think our PB is a stand-up guy, and he is willing to do what we want for the price he quoted, even if he misunderstood or misremembers what that was. Unfortunately, there are a few things he would be doing for the first time on our job so he would not warrant it if we pushed him to do it a certain way. It has been many months since we had our initial meetings (September for the first meeting) and worked on the contract, and I am mindful that while this is OUR only project, PB probably has a few projects to keep track of besides ours and may not remember the intricate details in the same way as we do.
Believe it or not, that was the short version! Ha ha!
Going forward, the plan is to pour coping on Monday with the non-premium color DCI "Weathered Tin." They will be using OG Stegmeier forms, and stamping a texture which will match the deck stamp texture on the top of the coping, and then cutting expansion joints every 4' - we want them as few as possible, but am not sure if 3' or 4' is optimal for the concrete. I came home last night and the forms were here, and had a bit of a heart attack over the "white tile strip" listed on the box, which necessitated a trip to google to find out we absolutely do not want a white tile strip left attached after our coping pour - after changing out all the fittings and skimmers and grout to gray, a white plastic strip on my tile line would probably make me have a fit. I clarified with PB that he will not be using that on our job, and he says it is a bit more laborious to do the pour without it but he will forgo using it. I think that is because we are using the form as a coping form rather than a cantilever deck form that is possible to not use the tile strip, which I think acts as an expansion joint for a cantilever deck.
Tues & Wed should be deck drains laid and plumbing pressure test, and weather permitting, deck pour on Thurs. I need to get the posts for our pergola (which we will build ourselves to save some $) over here because PB is going to set them for us prior to the pour. The deck will be poured with Weathered Tin and stamped with a large Ashlar Slate pattern. We will have some sample boards done so we can play with additional colors/tints/antiquing and then go in and chalk the deck stones where we want specific colors done. One thing we are still in the air on is grouting the stamped concrete. We had wanted all joints filled with grout to make it look like a mortared stone patio. PB misunderstood and thought we were specifying grout in the expansion joints, not all joints. That is one thing he says he is willing to do but not warranty. It is not a decision we need to make right now, we will be able to test it on the sample boards and it would be one of the last things we do, so we can think about taking our chances without the warranty or not. Anyone ever grouted a stamped concrete deck? Would appreciate any insight.
