Idea Gallery

This is my idea gallery, my most personal page, and to me, the most exciting. The gallery is meant to show what the artistry of concrete is about.

Here you can see my ideas and bring yours. You can see how concrete offers more freedom of choice, style and taste than any other design material, and so many more options than mall home improvement superstores. At the big chains, you can only choose from their ideas, not yours. And theirs are mostly in the shape of boxes.

With concrete ideas, you can custom design your kitchen, bathroom, or garden, to your own taste, style and shape. Home design ought to be a conversation, not the best of few choices.

Armstrong Stone is really about ideas. That’s why I started this company.

And this is how I work, building off of other people’s ideas, listening to them, taking them and making them happen. I have ideas of my own, but often, my best are sparked by other people.

Here, for example, is a picture of one of my favorite ideas, three puzzle pieces made from styrofoam molds, an idea we are working out at Armstrong Stone, and which might one day be a sculpture or table in your living room.

Here’s another one of our ideas: Would you like to get rid of your plastic or rubber dish drainer? Take a look at our custom-designed slanted drainboards, which look like art and dry your dishes.

I see myself as a functional artist, bringing your ideas for your home to life, and also making sure they function and last.

Here are some more gallery ideas:

• Inlays. Unlike any other material, concrete allows you to inlay objects – tiles, beads, stone, fossils, even personal items important to you and your family. One of our ideas was to inlay shells from one family’s long-time vacation beach, and another was to place glass beads from a great-aunt’s necklace.
• Shapes. Curved, circular and other shapes are possible to design in concrete without expensive cutting. We made a sea-blue sink in the shape of large shell for one customer. It was a little unusual, but we loved doing it.
• Colors. The ideas and possibilities are endless - anything off of the color wheel. I use custom made iron oxide pigments that never fade. You can go crazy in electric shades or be subdued and natural in earth tones.
• Surfaces. When most people think of surfaces, they think of wood and conventional stone. Concrete can be used in many different areas of your home – kitchens, bathrooms, hearths, as coffee-tables and planters and outdoor kitchens and tables. This means you can take your ideas (and ours) and re-think your home. You can be your own designer.
• Texture. In mall superstores, you have two or three choices of texture. With concrete, there are literally hundreds. We can design surfaces that are rough or smooth, that have holes and hairline cracks for character, that fit as well into 200-year-old homes as in modern split-levels.
• Edges. I’m the sort of designer that loves to talk about things like edges because it is a metaphor for the endless possibilities of concrete design. There are all sorts of edges that can be designed into countertops – roundovers, chamfered (beveled), "broken" edge (built to look broken), and almost any decorative molding can be used as an edge.

So we hope you’ll spend some time here, checking out our ideas — more ideas like tile inlays, slanted drainboards, cutting board knockouts, decorative edges, shapes, style and color.

We can talk all we want about forms and process, but we know that our company stands or falls on ideas. We want to hear yours. We stand behind ours.

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Armstrong Stone // Anthony Armstrong // Route 22, Salem NY 12865 // Tel: (518) 854-3137 // Email
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