Archive for October, 2011

Wax on Wax off….

Monday, October 31st, 2011

I am lucky to have a great crew!!! we kicked butt on the grouting today.

mom and curt even came to help 🙂

Bill mastered the float

...and we sponged and polished it up all nice!

East balcony grouted

Monday, October 31st, 2011

Day 4 – going over to prep for grout

Friday, October 28th, 2011

East

Its inevitabel that tiles will sag, we chisel them out and make adjustments where we can.

West Balcony Day 3

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Layout

West tiles are going up much easier, all the glitches worked out on the East side the day before!

time lapse, jumping ahead to the afternoon...its moving along well!

Install East balcony continued…

Friday, October 28th, 2011

WFYI came to visit! (camera guy on the left)

Adding background / field tile

Its coming together thanks to the Maxim Services crew!

East balcony complete! now on to the West balcony...tomorrow

Install Day 2 East Balcony

Friday, October 28th, 2011

Layout first circles

set border tiles...brrr! its still cold at 9am!

 

First piece up on the wall yay!!!

Install Day 1 Mon. Oct 24th

Friday, October 28th, 2011

clean and prep concrete

attach map/drawing to surface

transfer drawing

drawing transferred and ready to tile

Border tiles

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

One component of my design includes a border across the top and bottom of the balconies, like a frame. I custom designed an extruder die to make these tile pieces. The size is about 3″ x 2″ each. I used a gun metal glaze to tie in with the black banisters around the balcony steps.The shape of the tile acts as a “bullnose” which is tapered at the end to make the water flow off the mural; just like the end tiles in a bath area.

Necessity is the mother of invention!

Border "bullnose" tiles, there are about 240 of them.

Meanwhile….

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

As I’m working away at the studio I am trying not to be anxious! The canal site is in need of repairs prior to installing a tile mural, and hopefully this will be finished soon. Just another behind-the-scenes detail that is a necessary part of the process.

"Before" condition of balcony to be tiled.

All kiln firing is finished!

Wednesday, October 19th, 2011

I have completed glazing and firing all the pieces for both murals.Yippee! I am now doing some final layout, and have made some changes to the design. Next steps are numbering and packing in preparation to move everything to the Canal site. We are less than one week away from installing and I’m hoping for sunny weather all next week….

finished pieces laid out and ready to number and pack.