Work that sexy cement floor

Cement floors in painted, stained, coloured and personalised glory are appearing in homes, trendy restaurants, retail stores and modern office blocks. Not only do they protect your surfaces but they transform the space and add aesthetic appeal.

As with all trends we want to hold onto them for as long as possible so we give them a twist.

When most of us think of cement flooring, a garage comes to mind.

Modern trends in cement flooring have made these foundations much too pretty for simply parking your car. With a plethora of colours and styles and a durability that can't be beaten, it makes sense that cement is moving to the top of the pack in flooring choices.

However, these cement floors do need to be painted in order for them to be protected against foot traffic and the elements.

When it comes to flooring, think ‘barefoot luxury.  It’s all about texture and sensuality and the preference of feeling a solid cement floor.

“Painting cement floors can transform the space, bringing new life to both interior and exterior areas,” says Simon Stekhoven, CEO of Duram paints, innovation-driven paint developer and manufacturer of decorative paints and protective coatings.

Local manufacturer Duram Paint suggests why you should consider cement flooring as it’s easy to clean and maintain, highly resistant and durable as well as easy to change especially if you sell your home whereby the next owner can place carpet or wood on top of the cement slab. It’s also an excellent alternative to carpet if you have allergies.

Gone are those patios that fade, chalk or yellow and here’s to a new range of earthy colours — white, platinum, flagstone, slate, burnt red and forest green — that add a distinctive style to the area. 

A newcomer to South Africa’s paint industry, Duram Showfloor is an attractive long-lasting cement floor paint using the latest in water-based technology yet with polyurethane properties and performance to ensure enhanced weather/ UV protection and help enhance resistance to impact, wear and abrasion.

The Showfloor range is ideal for residential or commercial floors, in or outdoors and on either new or previously painted cement. Preferred areas include showrooms, restaurants, kitchens, patios, garages as well as light industrial floors.

Unlike other paints, Duram Showfloor is a range that comes in a user-friendly single pack so there’s no measuring or mixing or special skills or equipment for its application.

The Showfloor range is made up of a cleaner and greaser as well as a cement floor primer applied prior to the innovative polyurethane top coat that leaves a luxurious medium sheen finish.

“The beauty of this range - that uses the very latest polyurethane technology from Germany - is that it is an easy to apply, affordable and durable way of painting floors.” says Simon Stekhoven, CEO of Duram.

In addition to its decorative advantages, this low maintenance water-based paint is UV, weather, chemical and stain resistant, low odour, non-toxic as well as heavy metal and lead-free.

Trying to save bucks during Formula One visit?

Looking for a way to make some bucks over Formula One's inaugural race weekend in November?

You might try what Tip and Joy Giles are considering. They're talking about turning the side yard of their Southwest Austin home into a campground for a few days. Hey, with motel room rates reaching $500 for that weekend, why not provide a low-budget alternative?

"We were thinking about it, and my wife said maybe what we ought to do is rent out parcels of our land for tent camping, and that's how it got started," Tip said. "It started out as a joke."

And it may continue as a joke. Tip and Joy, who are retired schoolteachers, live in Tanglewood Forest, and Tanglewood Forest has a neighborhood association. And you know how those people are. Tip said they occasionally take pictures of uglified yards. And you can imagine the stir if a bunch of European motor monkeys are out there yodeling and carrying on.

"One of my neighbors is on the neighborhood board," Tip said. "I haven't run it by him yet, but I'm sure he'll look at me and say, ‘You're kidding, right?' And I'll say, ‘Well yeah, sort of.'"

"We'll call hell, and if hell freezes over, we'll do it," Joy said.

Meanwhile, Tip and Joy have come up with a rate structure for those who want to pitch a tent in their side yard, a standard 125-by-55-foot yard with a cedar fence running through the middle. Tip figures the yard would probably accommodate six couples. Staying in the front section would be cheaper than the back section, since it's closer to the street and traffic noise.

With no amenities except for use of the land, you're looking at $50 a night per person. Access to the garden hose jacks it up to $75 a night per guest. Add use of the extension cord, and you're looking at $100 a night. Isn't that a little steep? "If they can get $450 a night at Motel 6, we can at least get $200 for camping with a water hose," Tip said.

And that's not all. "For an extra $25 a day, we will include a continental breakfast — Twinkies and juice — and nightly entertainment — me playing my guitar on the our backyard deck," Tip said.

We're talking about fresh Twinkies, too. "The Twinkies will be within the shelf life," Tip said. What is the shelf life on a Twinkie? About two millennia?

There would be an additional fee for camping under the yard's arbor, a small open-air structure with a tile floor, a ceramic fish for decoration, a bench for sitting and a roof.

"That would be an added charge because you're covered," Tip said. "That hot November sun can be tough."

I hope the neighborhood association goes for it. These two folks did their time educating our kids. Tip taught at Menchaca and Odom elementary schools for a total of 25 years, with an additional five years in Del Valle and Fredericksburg, and Joy taught history for 30 years at Lockhart High. So they deserve a little economic bump, right?

This is not the first time the Gileses have been involved in a lark. They were in a loose-knit group called the Austin Non-Jog.

In April 1980, the group gathered in the morning along the route of the Capitol 10,000 race, handing out beer to the runners as they went by. Some joggers appreciated the handout. Others got their jockstraps in a twist.

I was covering the race that day. Tip said he offered me a beer. He said I told him, "No thanks, I have my bourbon," and that I had a flask in my back pocket. I don't remember that part of it. Maybe because I had a flask in my back pocket.

Anyway, it's a nice yard with plenty of healthy eats for campers. Joy grows lots of organic vegetables and fruits: Swiss chard, onions, plums, all sorts of greenery.

And if you want to use the bathroom, I guess you could go next door and bother the neighbors.

By Martha Marteney - ReminderNews

In honor of Black History Month, Manchester Community College is hosting the art exhibit, “Present,” by two local artists, Chotsani E. Dean and Howard el-Yasin, in the Hans Weiss Newspace gallery. Dean grew up in Windsor and now lives in Hartford. Currently a resident of New Haven, el-Yasin lived in Hartford as a teen. At the opening reception on Feb. 2, the artists described their works and the connection they feel to their history.

“A lot of work that I make comes out of my communal ancestry,” said Dean, whose pieces feature ceramic tiles hung on the wall, reminiscent of quilts. She explained that quilting provided an outlet not only for creativity and resourcefulness, but as a way to communicate through the symbols used in the quilts. This was especially important during the antebellum period, when many plantation mistresses taught the women slaves how to quilt. Dean noted that the women sometimes also learned to read and write, which was prohibited, but the men did not pay attention to the women during their quilting bees.

“I’m particularly honored to be part of show for Black History Month,” said el-Yasin, even through he said he does not consider himself as an Afro-American artist. Rather, he likes his forms to give a connection to history both through the discarded materials he uses and through his work process, which often involves, for example, adding color and taking it away. “Things are built up, changed, erased,” he said, much like each person’s individual history.

According to MCC professor Susan Classen-Sullivan, Dean and el-Yasin were selected for this exhibit because they are both important, contemporary artists. She also felt there would be a good conversation between Dean’s and el-Yasin’s pieces, a sentiment with which both artists agreed.

This is the first exhibit specifically for Black History Month, which was first suggested by Dean of Student Affairs G. Duncan Harris more than a year ago, but took some time to coordinate into the exhibit schedule. Harris said he felt is would be important for African-American students to see they can succeed in the arts, “to see that dream become a reality,” he said.

Referring to the multitude of Dean’s ceramic tiles that make up the “quilt” installations, Melissa Steward, an MCC social services student, said, “Her pieces are talking to me.” Steward was looking for inspiration for a Drawing II project that requires her to draw the same subject 50 times.

During el-Yasin’s opening remarks, MCC adjunct professor Anthony Billard observed el-Yasin’s “Verboten” (“Forbidden,” in German), saying, “I was having a dialogue with ‘Verboten’ of the entrapment and cage-like structure.” The hanging piece is made of twigs, twine, nails and hair. According to el-Yasin, that form reminds him that in Africa, the woods is a place where people are forced out into.

“I really like the tiles,” said Linda Bradley, who teaches Drawing I at MCC. “I usually work in black and white, so I admire people who work in color.” She also appreciated the apparent simplicity and spontaneity of the installation. Dean explained that the installations change each time the tiles are hung.

We Wilmoth’s favorite piece was el-Yasin’s “Layer Weight #1,” which features the layers of paint built up and removed. “There’s so many things you can see in it,” said Wilmoth, an MCC general studies student.

DWP Lincoln Heights office combines movie-house style with bill paying

If Emerald City had a utility office, it would resemble the DWP’s customer service center in Lincoln Heights. Sheathed in green ceramic tile and  opal glass, the streamlined facade of the Daly Street building includes a marquee featuring two-foot-high letters made from green glass that read: Municipal Light Water Power. All that’s missing are Munchkins lined up to pay overdue electric bills. The building, originally constructed in the 1920s, owes its flashy design to architect  S. Charles Lee, who apparently applied many of  the lessons he learned creating eye-catching movie palaces to this modest, approximately 3,000-square-foot structure.

Lee, who worked on several projects for the utility, transformed the simple brick storefront in Lincoln Heights into a jewel-box with a Regency Moderne facade as part of a $7,000 remodeling project.

The utility’s Lincoln Heights office opened in 1938 complete with a display of an all-electric kitchen and home economic classes, according to the DWP.  After serving Lincoln Heights for nearly 40 years, the Daly Street office closed and the emerald-green glass letters removed after the building was damaged during the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake. The office remained closed until 2008 when it reopened following $2 million in repairs and renovations.  The original glass letters were found in a warehouse and returned to Lincoln Heights office, which is a city historic-cultural monument.

After walking past the glitzy facade and through a doorway framed in copper, DWP customers enter a pretty standard office albeit with historic photos and period lighting fixtures. It’s still no fun paying your utility bill but at least the architecture of the Lincoln Heights office, according to a security guard who works there, “softens the blow.”

RLPO Orchestra/Vasily Petrenko, Philharmonic Hall, Liverpool

In the five years since Vasily Petrenko became chief conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra they have together demonstrated rare finesse and confidence in a wide repertoire. Music from Petrenko’s native Russia has understandably done well, but he has also proved a natural Elgarian. Now he adds another string to his bow: Mahler.

Sir Charles Groves stamped the composer on to Liverpool’s consciousness in the 1960s with a pioneering cycle of symphonies that had the impressionable young Simon Rattle smitten. Petrenko has taken advantage of the 2010-11 Mahler double anniversary – 150 years since Mahler’s birth (1860) and 100 since his death (1911) – with a similar marathon, and if this account of the Seventh Symphony is any guide, he has given Liverpool something more to be proud of. Like the music itself, it was a mercurial, multifaceted performance, full of deftly sketched colours and moods, and all the more potent for the orchestra’s characterful playing – never blowsy or undernourished, and always alert to Mahler’s quicksilver inspiration.

But the most notable quality was Petrenko’s seamless grasp of tempo, managing the myriad transitions with a fluency that eludes many more experienced conductors. That, and his flexibility of phrasing, tapped into the music’s gut – a wonderful marriage of head and heart, freedom and control. The interpretation was very much in the Classical-Romantic mould, promoting the symphony’s structural integrity and lyrical inspiration over its garish, episodic qualities.

The best came first, in an opening adagio-allegro movement that built an unstoppable head of steam, underlining how skilfully Petrenko places his crescendos. The first Nachtmusik showcased the orchestra’s softer edges, the scherzo its unshowy virtuosity. Petrenko’s only misjudgment was his neutral tempo for the second Nachtmusik, which sagged, but he compensated with a firecracker finale, the graveyard of most performances of this work.

Before the interval Alina Ibragimova, a Russian-born violinist increasingly noticeable on the UK concert scene, was soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No 4. She lent it her sweet, slender, feminine tone in a typically unmannered performance that did not have quite enough to say.