Met History wrote:

>>Try the front steps at the New Victory Theater. Last time I > looked they> looked pretty good.> They may look like shit now but I doubt it.
>>
>>
>Thank you, Ken.  The real test of course is how something ages.  c
>
c

I age curmudgeonly.

You may also be intersted in the front areaway railing balustrade
elements that were made of a precast concrete at the House of Fifteen
Bathrooms. They are small elements framed by a top rail of very
excellent quality brownstone, and then by a base and outside columns
mixed of brownstone and composite patching materials. I felt that on
removal of the paint from the elements that the exposure of small white
quartz pebbles, not much larger in appearance than I have seen in
recently quarried Portland Brownstone installed at Yale -- though here
in the precast rounded and not cut through flat as with the quarried
brownstone... I thought the clean precast was incredibly beautiful. The
client, did not, and I was asked to do something about it and without
much aesthetic direction. What I did this week, after much hemming &
hawing (an entire winter's worth) was stain them with a mix of pigments
and potasium silicate, purchased at Kremer pigments on Elizabeth Street.
It does not look like too bad of a mess. You can still see the pebbles,
though they are muted. I explained to the architect that this would be a
permanent fix, not reversible... which hardly matters as a preservation
ethical issue as this entire railing assembly is a pig trying to look
like a peacock. While you are at it you can compare these balustrades to
the concrete pipe breed of balustrades for the two railings of the main
steps -- I think courtesy of Adami from an elfin statuary supplier, if
not outright cobbed in molds in someone's Brooklyn back yard (where a
lot of really fine work can occur). I've been asked to gussy these up as
well... but the potassium silicate is so damned messy, it flows like
water and gets all over everything lower than the object you are
staining. I tried an acid wash on them to no avail. It is something of a
face-saving problem when you set up for a mock-up that occupies a 6 inch
square area then nothng happens to the material as a result. They may
need a micro-abrasive blasting, but the worksite is incredibly busy with
people walking on the street with thier fancy dogs, people moving
constantly in and out of the lower door to the building -- where we had
to set the threshold stone -- with flowers, fancy wallpaper and
expensive children. I am perplexed what to tell them about their for
crap precast balustrades. I am really beginning to hate working there.
It took us three days of visits to set the one door threshold stone.

][<

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