The Concrete Impressionist:

A Lifetime of Concrete Experience In New York City

Juliet Farmer, ConcreteNetwork.Com Columnist

Concrete runs in Dominick Cardone's family—his father was a flatwork concrete contractor, and Dominick grew up in the business, working for his father as a young boy through high school, and working for a construction company in Manhattan after he graduated.

"My father taught me to work with my first piece of concrete," explains Dominick. "Now he's retired in Florida, but when he comes up to see me, he plays with the concrete and is amazed at what we're doing with it now...He's like a kid in a candy store...It's great to see him [still] so excited about concrete."

At the age of 19, Dominick took his accumulated years of experience and started his own company, C.I. Construction & Design Corp. (parent company to The Concrete Impressionist) in Brooklyn. He focused at first on concrete exterior renovations, then in the late 80s and early 90s, shifted his focus to high-end residential interiors in Manhattan until concrete came back into play in the mid to late 90s.

"I had a client in Tribecca who wanted a stone countertop in the kitchen," Dominick explains. "I knew about concrete, and I had concrete polishing experience, so I told them we should try a concrete countertop and if they weren't happy, I'd replace it for free with whatever they wanted."

Dominick says the countertop was 90 to 100 square feet, cast in place, and was very successful. "Then I knew we needed to have a portfolio before we brought concrete countertops to the market, so we made them for all my friends and family," Dominick adds.

The Concrete Impressionist now provides a wide variety of pre-cast and cast-in-place countertops, tables, furniture, sinks and fireplace surrounds. Recent additions to the family of products include vertical walls, and custom wall and floor tile.

The company, which serves the entire Tri-State area, offers self-leveling overlays, microtoppings, acid stained concrete, logos in concrete, dyed concrete, and polished concrete—and that's just for the floors.

"A strong point for us is floors," says Dominick. "We make Super Floors—true polished concrete floors. We take an existing and/or new concrete slab through a nine step process to create a full polished floor. A Super Floor."

In order to spread the word about his Super Floors, Dominick is hosting a presentation on April 28 in New York at Hafele so that architects and designers can learn about The Concrete Impressionist's versatile product and its possibilities.

A new addition to The Concrete Impressionist's roster is pattern stamping and vertical stamping, incorporating colors to create the realistic look of stone, as well as the flexibility of creating purple brick, for example.

What's sure to be a growing trend is The Concrete Impressionist's use of lighting in their projects, including concrete tables with lighting for a nightclub, as well as incorporating fiber-optic lighting with pre-cast bar countertops.

The Concrete Impressionist offers 20 standard colors—a launching pad for the more than 24,000 color possibilities they can create. "We've taken a color chip and adjusted it for clients," Dominick explains. "It's not just standard colors we offer...They come to us because of the possibilities. Whatever they want, we can do it."

Though there are thousands of possibilities, Dominick says the most popular requests include variations of gray—whether it's natural, pale or silver gray—as well as various earth tones and the occasional cobalt blue. "The market is heavy on a natural look, which could be a trend," he adds.

A feather in the cap for the company was the most recent award-winning 9/11 Memorial " Postcards" by Architect Masayuki Sono in Staten Island, New York. The Concrete Impressionist provided the intricate installation and application of the exposed aggregate base for the piece.

Dominick is an American Concrete Institute Certified Flatwork Finisher and an American Society of Concrete Contractors member, as well as a Decorative Concrete Council member. He credits his group, whom he says is very versatile and crafted, with much of his company's success—that, coupled with the education Dominick immerses himself and his employees in. "I started taking seminars," he explains. "I wanted all the information I could get my hands on...This is a tricky industry. It's lots of trial and error."

The company offers in-house training and seminars for his employees, focusing on testing products before bringing them to market, and also educating clients about concrete—what they need to know, what to expect in the future, and design possibilities. "In our closed-door in-house seminars for our own group, we experiment and find new things, bettering the group," Dominick says.

Dominick says The Concrete Impressionist's website will soon reflect all the new and exciting work they've been doing, including their Super Floors, vertical stamping, and a gallery of work in progress, which will help personalize the jobs and group. "People are always amazed by the actual process happening," he adds.

"Our website is huge," Dominick says. "It helps educate our clients prior to them speaking with us. The Concrete Network has also helped us dramatically...I can't say enough about The Concrete Network and what it's done for my company."

Dominick adds that he believes the decorative concrete industry is going to be a giant. "Right now it's a sleeping giant," he laughs. "A lot of new people are coming in, and I hope they have the same values we do."

He again stresses the importance of education, adding, "You can't get enough education, learning about new products, standards, and applications. I don't think it will ever end...I've just begun to educate myself."

The Concrete Impressionist
Dominick Cardone
678 Berriman Street
Brooklyn, NY 11208
(718) 677-1298 Office
(718) 677-0651 FAX
(888) 896-8096 Toll Free
Send Mail Now - Click Here
www.concreteimpressionist.com

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