Wednesday, August 10, 2011

From Castaway to Fountain: A Photo Essay

I've written about my summer fountain project and the lessons learned from it here.  Before summer ends, let me post some pictures.

The fountain's base is an old concrete sink.  We created the rest of it from terra cotta pots that once held dying/dead plants.  Here's one of them, a before picture, if you will.




We did mosaic work.  What fun to play with glass!


 I like the frosted cake look at this point in the process, but you still need to grout, both to solidify the mosaic project and to make it more waterproof.  With grout, you're literally cementing the whole thing together.  Otherwise, it's just adhesive, and not as permanent.


 We could have gone out to buy white grout and stuck with the frosted cake look.  But we had charcoal colored grout left over from a different project, so we went with that.  The pictures don't show this aspect of our project as well, but the charcoal grout makes the glass glow more than it did when backed in white.


In the above picture, you can see the three flowerpots that we used.



Above, a picture of the sink before the project.


Above, a picture of the final fountain (unless we mosaic the inside).  Again, a picture doesn't do justice.  I wish you could all see it when the sun shines on it--it shines in amazing ways.  I wish we could all join together on my patio (which would be amazingly weed-free for our soiree).  We'd read and write poetry and drink wine and cheese, while the fountain burbled in the background.

In my imagination, we'd all stay cool and comfortable, despite the fact that we've reached the time when the temperature doesn't drop much below 85 degrees, even at night.  In my imagination, I have the perfect patio furniture.  In my imagination, the neighborhood has been magically made quiet so we can hear ourselves think.  In my imagination, the wine and cheese--and let's throw in some amazing bread--contains no calories.

Ah, my imagination! 

2 comments:

Sandy Longhorn said...

Kristin, this is amazing! I love the charcoal grout so I'm glad you didn't have any white grout on hand. So cool.

Kathleen said...

Wow, love this, and the pix of the process! Will show handyman hubby.