Almost twenty years ago Dawn and Duane worked for us while we did a project at West Edmonton Mall. Becke taught Dawn to paint the features we were building at that time. This week Cassie, their second oldest child, is learning those same painting techniques from Becke. Cassie is doing awesome! Like her mom, Cassie is a hard worker and good listener with a great sense of humour. She is eager to do her very best. THANKS!
In his genes
We have three guests in our shop over the next couple of weeks. My nephew and his oldest two kids are in the valley for some events on the next few weekends so we decided to keep them busy on the weekdays. Duane (the father) has worked for us occasionally for short periods through the years and is exceptionally good at all he tackles. The kids have never worked for us previously. Sidney is a natural. Only sixteen, he is very confident and eager to learn. We assigned him one of the tougher jobs in the shop, tying on the galvanized lath. He needed little instruction before he set to work. By day's end he had finished four difficult pieces. AMAZING! I think these skills are in his genes.
Overbuilding - with a purpose
Often the welded steel structural frames we build have little resemblance to the final shape of the finished feature. It just has to fit inside the final envelope. The structure doesn't have to be pretty - just extremely strong and rigid. The concrete skins that form the pretty part will tolerate no movement. If we were building in place it would be a relatively simple matter. Because we are building it in our shop, moving it a number of times, lifting it, transporting it and lifting it a final time the frame needs to handle a lot of torsional stress. This means we often overbuild just to be well on the safe side. Our current project qualifies in every way.
