[ Creative Decorative Concrete From Silicon Valley Alumni]

Creative Decorative Concrete From Silicon Valley Alumni

By Juliet Farmer
ConcreteNetwork.Com Columnist

Visual Concrete, based in Howard County, Maryland, uses concrete as a medium to bring a creative and beautiful aspect to any interior or exterior environment. They provide concrete countertops, acid staining, decorative overlays and epoxy systems that will enhance any concrete surface in a commercial or residential property.

Don McClain, owner of the company, has experience training with the best in the industry, including Colormaker Floors, Buddy Rhodes and Bob Harris. But before McClain found his true calling in the decorative concrete industry, he spent eight years in the high tech field as an I.T. manager in the Silicon Valley. It was only when his employer consolidated offices and was relocating to Boston that push came to shove.

"We didn't want to go, so my wife and I quit our jobs and traveled around the world with our new baby," McClain recalls, adding that both he and his wife have always been design inclined (they met at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston). "Somebody turned us on to decorative concrete along the way."

"Decorative concrete allows me to be creative, something I wasn't able to do in my I.T. job," he continues. "When we decided to pursue this, we packed up and moved back to where I'm from (and grew up) in Maryland. We had a whole network of friends and family for support while we started our company."

According to McClain, is located in one of the richest counties in the nation. That, coupled with the boom in building and construction going on, as well as the fact that the competition is far less than that in California, sealed the decision to settle in Maryland.

McClain started out by buying into a decorative concrete overlay dealership to get his feet wet. Then, he attended the World of Concrete, where he was wowed. "I added Colormaker acid stained floors to my offerings, because I appreciate their artisan approach," he says. "I trained with them, and I also trained with Buddy Rhodes and added countertops to my product line." Soon after, he added stamped concrete.

McClain says he's been keeping busy and that the phone's been ringing off the hook. As for where his work takes him, he explains, "We'll go anywhere, depending on the size of the project, we've been up to Canada for a job, as well as the Baltimore and D.C. areas, and to southern Maryland."

"People look at what we offer and desire something new and interesting," McClain adds. "They're pulling away from marble and granite. They want to make good use out of what they already have by working with existing surfaces."

For example, for a residential home on the water in Annapolis, acid stained the floor with a tile cut pattern. For the children's room, they added overlay to the existing concrete floor, using an integral caramel color before dry casting more color to achieve the look of sand. Lastly, they stenciled seashells and starfish and acid stained the designs.

"People are thinking outside the box," McClain comments. "They want something different, and [as a result], we can get complex with our designs."

Another such example is the Iron Bridge Wine Company restaurant in Columbia, Maryland, which had an existing acid stained floor. "They added an addition, and I did the new acid stained floor and restored the old floor," McClain says regarding the project.

For the old floor, used Colormaker's Amber and Aged Buff stains. For the new floor, they integrally colored cotta on a second layer and did a third layer in grey before sanding the third layer to expose some of the second layer. Lastly, they acid stained the whole thing.

As for where the ideas come from, McClain explains, "I get ideas from the space and playing with products and applications. I [try to] choose colors to compliment, but I also leave parts of the project unplanned, I make it up as I go along, which allows for more creativity."

McClain says 's commercial work is really taking off, with lots of calls from architects, property owners and designers. One such call resulted in work on a 1850s building in Baltimore City that Biohabitats Inc. was turning into their offices.

"They wanted to maintain the integrity of the stone and brick building, to keep things natural," he explains of the approach. "So I acid stained the concrete floors to bring out earth tones."
Another commercial project, for La Palapa restaurant in Columbia, involved concrete countertops and vanities for the bathrooms. "They had another restaurant where I live, and I introduced myself to the owner," says McClain of how he landed the job.

Visual Concrete's work included the women's room countertop, where they used Buddy Rhodes Earth color, the men's room countertop (in Moss), and the bar tops (in a custom Sky blue with a pressed vein in Ash).
Next up for is polishing. "We want to focus on concrete polishing in the future and start offering that as well," McClain adds.

But for now, McClain has his hands full leaving his decorative concrete mark on all he touches.