Saturday, June 16, 2007

Marenakos

It is just now that I'm about to head back out to Washington that I'm writing of coming home from Washington. I have been so very busy. The busier I get the faster time goes. If I don't cool down and write a little bit before going to bed, it will be 3am before I'm able to close my eyes.

It has been a successful day. I have made progress on the pile of work before me. I was able to close four projects. Burn CD's, and dump the files on my two hard drives. That is a wonderful feeling. With each project I get more comfortable in my work and I'm confident this last project I've finished is really good. I am getting faster at putting together my presentation material, which gives me more design time. Sketchup is the best program for my residential projects.

Back to Washington, Dad was driving me to the airport, which is about a 3 hour drive from the central part of the state to SeaTac. At Issaqua he asks if I want to pull into Marenakos. I love rock, and I was excited to see first hand this famous little business. I was not disappointed. Men in overalls were lined up three wide on forklifts waiting for orders from salesmen. Numerous well dressed customers, probably designers and architects, with notebooks and cameras were perusing the rows of slate and rock and stone. Dad and I, droolers, headed off into the fray.

I was taking pictures of building details on Marenakos had on display, noting prices and ogling favorite rocks. Dad and I were calculating out loud the cost of shipping, adding that to material cost and labor and translating that into the cost required to charge the client per square foot. Yikes. It is not the material that is the expensive part. Rock is heavy.

I love our native rock, but there is some beautiful rock coming out of Montana and Arizona. Some of these exotic rock would make excellent accents to the native rock we typically use in landscapes. I determined to design in some of these special rocks as accents, stone caps and benches.

I love to walk through the rock yard. It has been a while since I have been here in Oklahoma City, but I'm going to have to go back and compare. Brick out numbers rock here. I didn't see any brick at Marenakos. Just rock, and lots of it.

jlw