It’s hard to picture a slow day at Lonestar Concrete Systems — the decorative concrete installation company completes an average of 2,500 projects per year, has anywhere from 70 to 100 projects going at all times and works regularly for big-name clients, including Walmart, McDonald’s and Family Dollar, explains owner Brad Walker.

How you can find new business in a sluggish economy

Outside-the-box tips for getting the word out about you services. How many of these have you tried?

As concretists, each of us defines ourselves as “one who practices concrete poetry.” As we craft this material, we are crafting a poem. At the most basic level, that poem can be a haiku — deceptively simple.

Let me ask if this sounds like somebody you know — you put in years perfecting your decorative concrete craft and consider yourself an expert in your field. Past customers appreciated your skill, courtesy and professionalism, and they refer friends and relatives to your services. But recently you have noticed something is changing, and this change makes you uneasy. Sure, you have sharpened the pencil, but it seems most months come and go leaving you asking where all the money is going.

After painstakingly laying out a grout pattern for your acrylic overlay, meticulously masking and re-masking surrounding areas, and then spraying or troweling in just the right color and texture scheme, you stand back and admire your handiwork, and the job looks great.

Dominating the interior of Mille-feuille, a tiny bakery and cafe in New York City’s Greenwich Village, is a massive pale beige countertop, all smooth concrete curves and subtle flecks of off-white marble. The piece is the work of Passaic, N.J., decorative concrete contractor Remigiusz “Remik” Iwuc, owner of Concrete Shop. In Remik’s eight years as a concrete fabricator, he’s done his fair share of complex projects. But with two architecture firms involved, a pair of hands-on clients with engineering degrees, and a design with extreme performance requirements and no margin for error, the Mille-feuille project represented something of a perfect storm.

What if there was a way to take the leftover concrete from a job site and turn it into a moneymaker instead of throwing it away? Thanks to Proline Concrete Tools’ Compass Rose Medallion Table Top Mold, there is.

The days of the straight-lined concrete walkway, patio or driveway are waning. Designs that incorporate sweeping curves or tight radiuses are more popular now than ever.

Picture the elementary school you attended. The floors were probably concrete covered by institutional-style vinyl tile or commercial-grade carpet. In a word, boring.

Imagine this: You own an estate in the California hills overlooking Monterey Bay. You are a lover of art and natural beauty. You want a swimming pool complex with a large concrete deck and pool house. You want it to accentuate the surrounding landscape and incorporate the feel of the bay, but you’re not sure how you want to achieve that. Who do you call?

If you think clear sealers won’t affect the color of concrete, you’re right in some instances and wrong in others.

During a hot summer in northern Texas, a cool dip in a pool or ride down a water slide can be the perfect remedy, and that’s exactly what you’ll find at Paradise Springs, a new water park that opened for the 2011 summer season at the Gaylord Texan, a Grapevine, Texas, resort owned by luxury hospitality chain Gaylord Hotels.