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Making concrete match stone

Decorative concrete contractors are always looking for their next source of inspiration. For Kevin Percy and Percy Concrete & Design, Inc., Wrentham, Mass., he found it in a homeowner's stone fireplace and exposed stone chimney. Percy, who was creating a vertical stamped concrete overlay on an outdoor barbecue, came up with the idea to match the overlay on the barbecue to the stonework on the homeowner's chimney to carry the stone theme throughout the backyard.

This was Percy's first outdoor barbecue, which he says he approached in a design-and-build-as-you-go manner. But that doesn't mean he didn't start the job without planning and research. Percy used a computer software program to lay out the project and determine the basics of design. From there he moved on to the physical work.

The outdoor barbecue included a grill, sink, wood box and wood burning fireplace. The whole piece was 22 feet long and between 4 feet and 8 feet tall.

Percy's first step was to pour a 1-foot-deep concrete footing. He then used 8-inch concrete masonry blocks to build the structure. "We laid the blocks out in a semi-arc design. We drilled rebar into the footing in every cell of the block, and then we stacked the block around the perimeter to the exact heights that we wanted," Percy says. He then filled the blocks with concrete to create one structure.

He used a hopper gun to spray Butterfield Color T1000 Sprayable Overlay over the block as a scratch coat. "Sometimes block lines will profile through so we put the scratch coat on to hide everything and give a monotone color all the way around prior to applying anything else," Percy says. He then sprayed Butterfield's T1000 Primer over the scratch coat.