Concrete Placement Collaboration in the Heart of San Saba, TX

Ken and Kynda Jordan, are rebuilding San Saba one space at a time. After massive success with Jordan Cattle Auction, they’ve revolutionized the iconic Harry’s Boots into an online and destination-retailing powerhouse. The alley behind Harry’s Boots in San Saba once hosted gravel and trash. This new project transformed that space into a very clean alley and an outdoor entertainment space.

We have done several projects for the Jordan Family - Harry’s may be the most special to us. In 2016, we cast the concrete countertop that all customers must touch (it’s utterly irresistible: so familiar, yet so strikingly tight and smooth). Bespoke concrete castings are not cheap, but they are perfect for a high-end Western wear retailer.

In 2017 we created a stained concrete window sill. Fitting a masonry material to a 100+ year old window is ideally suited to element7concrete: element7 = tightly finished, and concrete is like a soup that turns to stone.

In 2018, we were called on to help transform the alley behind the store. We probably put more design work into this project than any other that year. The tension to manage was to define an outdoor living area where folks could sit and enjoy live music separate from the alleyway while keeping it all subtle. We broke all the spaces up with rectangles proportioned to evoke different feelings. Kynda had a great idea to use planters to separate the spaces. After some research we found some incredibly durable plumbing fixtures built for sports fields that could be set below grade. This means that planters could be automatically irrigated or totally removed. Mike Methvin, the placement contractor, did an extraordinary job with the drainage. There was very little fall available from the highest to the lowest point so he inlaid a metal pipe in order to screed more precisely than anyone could have otherwise.

The carefully proportioned rectangles serve another purpose: durability. That alleyway hosts innumerable semi-trucks, yet with no slab over 14 feet long, the odds of cracked concrete are very low.

This project plays to everyone's strengths: placement contractors do site work, reinforcement, and placement more efficiently than we can. Our fresh team of artisans taking over at the end works much better than having a proverbial framer do trim carpentry.

Stamped concrete stands up to heavy traffic and cleans up better when it is “showtime” than any other surface, and this is a showpiece of doing that well.