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"In between the medium to finer grit polishing, we trowel on a cement slurry to fill the pin holes that will develop as we grind down," he says. He finishes with a minimum two coats of sealer and waxes all surfaces with a carnuba wax.

"We do the mold making well because we are also woodworkers," Jarman says. "I have a master mold maker in the shop and I have a lot of woodworking experience in my background, so the mold making comes easily to us. I make detailed shop drawings first, yet we sometimes need to make adjustments when mold fabrication is underway. It is a key part of being able to do these concrete countertops because every mold is custom made and then thrown away at the end of each project."

Jarman's attention to detail hasn't gone unnoticed. He was the recipient of the 2008 Best of Show award from Cheng Concrete's Member's Circle of Distinction Design Challenge for a concrete fireplace piece. The award-winning project also included about 40 feet of precast countertops in the client's home, including a 14-foot island with a 5-foot-diameter circular countertop at one end.

Jarman's first commercial countertop project was a coffee-serving area at a café (see Countertops Special Section cover photo on p. 34). It includes a 15-foot-long upper countertop that was poured in two pieces and a lower one-piece, 6-foot curved section that is 19 inches wide at its narrowest part and expands to 24 inches wide at the other end. Jarman used a stone concrete color and lightly polished the upper countertop as to not expose a lot of aggregate. He got a little more aggressive on the curved portion to expose more of the blue glass and yellow river stone aggregate on the lower curved piece. An agate inlay is a focal point for the piece.

Jarman recently completed a traditional kitchen countertop project that included a 42 inch by 66 inch by 2 inch thick island poured in one section. "It was a real challenge to get it through the door and flip it over," Jarman says, but his crew has experience in careful transport of precast concrete pieces. "We've made a carrying A-frame that we use on the back of our trucks. We carry them on edge and clamp them onto the A-frame so they don't move when they're transported. And we have a couple of big guys we call on who help us move the heavier pieces."