Reactive
staining on vertical concrete surfaces is
not that common - yet. But according to Steve Schmid,
president of Stone Touch Inc. in Salt Lake City
it's starting to catch on.
Schmid
is a vertical stain veteran. He has stained a 22-foot-high,
38,000-square-foot retaining wall for a ritzy residential
development in Jackson Hole, WY; a 80,000-square-foot
tilt-up office building, also in Jackson Hole; three
bridges in Salt Lake City; and a library in St.
George, Utah. "In an area like Jackson, painting
looks so artificial in such a beautiful setting,"
lie says. "There are quite a few stained vertical
surfaces up there."
The
more walls he stains, the more requests he gets.
"They see a job we've done and they want the
same thing," he says. "As people see how
it's a viable option and that they don't have to
repaint it, it kind of catches on."
Spraying stain onto vertical surfaces can yield
remarkable results. Just ask Kemiko Concrete Products
president Barbara Sargent. One of the company's
signature jobs completed in 1953 on the walls of
Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park.
Even
today, the building shimmers with "the colors
of the Grand Canyon," Sargent says. Applying
reactive stain to a vertical concrete surface is
not all that different from staining a floor - concrete
is still concrete and stain is still stain. But
prior knowledge of a few common problems that crop
up when the process is tilted up can help save some
anguish later on.
