1985 to 1992
“A Local Business is Born” is a 20-year story of what I did to survive in the stone fabrication business before the kitchen counter revolution of the 1990s.
I continued working alone for the most
part, in my new shop with the walls full of stone slabs. I found
little work, stone counters were still seven or eight years away in
Portland. It wasn't until magazines showed the use of stone in
kitchens, that local fabrication became a practical industry
I got a few commercial jobs that I cut
out with my primitive push saw. I asked Mike and Dan who formed the
Portland Marble Works to install them, since I was by myself. Oregon
Marble and Granite bid against me on each job back then. Work was
still scarce, mostly fireplaces and bath work, some commercial
reception counters for downtown offices. It's hard for me to believe
that I cut them out with that primitive saw.
I had a friend named Costa Arvantes --
a woman’s dream lover – who come to work with me. Women seem to
bring these guys into the country now and again I have found. An old
country craftsmen they tell you, I suspect otherwise. It took me a
year or two, to figure whether we had a language problem or an
intelligence problem, never fully knew, but I eventually gave up on
Costa. Some years later a another woman asked me to employ her Greek
master craftsmen she brought to Portland. I remember he showed up at
a sculpture seminar with her one summer, and carved out one of those
damn ugly stone sinks from some special stone they wanted the
sculpture community to buy. My Mexican friend Elizabeth (see “Things
Are Different in Mexico” blog) drove over to their home on the way
back from camp. It was hilarious and sad too, for this gal, their
entire back yard was stacked with ugly off-white marble slabs and
blocks right on the ground, I am sure the winter rains of Oregon
submerged them into the ground. I have met some fine craftsmen from
Europe, but for the most part it's all romance; Americans hold their
own. You can only spread the memory of the Renaissance so far; talent
is not hereditary. When I looked at the modern stone work of Europe
it certainly did not exceed American standards. However I was amazed
what Europeans did with architectural glass. Same in Mexico City, the
glass work is wonderful.
A new era started around 1986. I asked
my son Charles who was out of high school and working part-time and
going to a Community college. A little later, my daughter came home
to live with me also. We somehow all lived in my little
900-square-foot, wood stove heated house. I remember the first
Thanksgiving day, Charles and I driving down a cold and wind blown
Beaverton Hillsboro highway in my international scout to cash a
40-dollar check at a check cashing place to get our Thanksgiving
food. Things were tight. The shop had all tools that I made, except
for two grinders and a skill saw. We used one half of the shop space
then building displays of uses of stone in kitchen and bath and
furniture, and floors since there was so little local information on
the product. Today most customers are very educated on what they want
it seems to me, not that they don’t need help from stone
fabricators, which is a service that professionals are glad to give.
My memory of the next 3 or 4 years may have some shortcomings.
Charles soon began to work at night making sculpture bases for bronze
artists. He bought brass sheets and cut out with skill saw and
brought two inch marble slabs up from California. A business now
taken over buy India and China any product line that you develop
that can be made in multiples, will be taken over by China or India.
Survival in the stone industry is only possible by custom fabrication
and good service.
Charles around this time left for a job
in Los Angeles to work for a marble wholesaler Marble Unlimited
delivering slabs to marble fabricators in California, quite a good
education. Came back to Portland in about one year as I recall. The
shop took a big step forward when he flew to Phoenix and bought a
used Tysman saw, which we reassembled and had a electrician wire up
for us. I don’t think many people fully understand what a bridge
saw can bring to a marble business. Obviously, cutting becomes faster
and much easier, but the true value is that it allows a craftsman to
make easy choices where to cut up a slab, allowing for patterning
decisions, not easily, or often done,without 360-degree ability
cutting. It opens up a whole new world to a marble shop. If you don’t
understand this, take a skill saw and stand next to a 5' by 9' slab
of stone and plan how to cut out the best pattern for your customer.
It can be done but not many people will. A bridge saw makes it easy
and fast.
I have spent years of my life in a
effort to find fabrication work in Portland. During this time period
1985 to 1992, my daughter and I installed, with her friend Tracy,
many commercial marble floors in two high rise buildings, for a
design firm and wonderful developer both of whom believed in us. It
was unheard of to see a woman in the trades in those days (the early
1990s); women in the work force were constantly harassed by other
tradesmen back then. I remember a doctor in Portland’s most
expensive neighborhood saying he would not have women work in his
home when he came home, and found my daughter and I tiling his
bathroom. I built my own tile saw, not having money to buy one.
Eventually we were able to buy a tile saw, which made life easier. We
did marble and granite tile jobs where ever we could find them in
Oregon while Charles kept the home fires burning fabricating any
reception counters we could get. Kitchen counters very slowly
beginning to appear. The first one in Portland was done for a family
that is still a customer. Charles' future bride Debby started coming
in part-time to keep the books in our little office we built in the
shop. Totally a family business it was, and still is.
As I stated, slab work was still quite
scarce, so I spent time trying to make the best usage of what we did
have available, marble and granite tiles. I developed tile edges for
application on kitchen counters (see drawing). The stone tile counter
was finished on the front edge by installing a molding or various
designs we made in the shop of the same stone. I thought it would be
especially suited to areas where stone shops were not available, tile
could be shipped by UPS to us, moldings fabricated and sent back to
the tile setter. Quick turn around again. We did 25 or so kitchens in
Portland area using 2' by 2' granite tiles and our edges – seems
like the average cost of these jobs was $2500. I suspect they're
still being used. Of course we wouldn’t have done this had there
been a market for slab counters, still in the future. We also trimmed
elevator jambs and tub surrounds and other things with our stone
moldings. I doubt there are any tile setters around even today who
could match our beautiful finished jobs. These projects helped keep
us alive. We at the same time precast inlaid tiles for special floor
projects allowing us to do interesting floor deigns at a reasonable
price. (As my brother Don who worked in the stone industry from 1946
to 1985 said, the most important change in the industry in his life
time was glues and mastics, or as my friend Jim Laport said, it's so
nice to be able to level the hearth with your feet while you're
gluing the fireplace facing up. Mastic’s eliminated the need for a
marble setter. Almost anyone could glue up the stone. But as I stated
in part 2, few people could lay a good floor. I struggled with this,
but got by. The key to laying a really good floor is in understanding
your setting bed materials, as my old friend Fred told me, every time
you set one stone you are altering the ones around it. Using the
correct setting bed minimizes this problem. (See “Some Things I
have learned from Stone People” at
http://stonecutter.blogspot.com.) Its also helpful to have a strong
back and good knees.
Into the early 90s stone counters began
to appear as we took the final application of tile edges, applied it
to my sandwich panel structural system, and build a series of
executive conference tables by inlaying tile designs on my plywood
sandwich panels and grinding them smooth, creating a strong light
weight stone surface not a lot different than I started out doing 20
years earlier in the garage, only much more sophisticated.
I will stop the story here. As stone
counters entered Portland, stone supply houses flourished, marble
shops began to appear on every corner Everyone become a stone expert
overnight, as our little family marble shop that had struggled along
for 20 years entered the world of granite counters. I think the next
20 year story would best be told be my son, maybe 20 years from now –
for he may be one of the few of his generation who has any idea what
stone work was like for us who went through this transformation from
one half-dozen to 400 people employed in the stone industry in
Portland. What a business it is.
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