CARLSBORG — Colin Hiday got the bug to create with concrete when he was just 12.

“I worked for my dad growing up, and I saw a stamp at Disneyland,” Hiday said of his father, David, a well-known Dungeness Valley concrete foundation builder.

“And I asked him, ‘How do you do that?'”

The stamp he refers to is one that puts a pretty design on what otherwise would be an ordinary gray slab of concrete.

A specially designed latex stamp can be pounded into concrete to add a compass rose or sun design, for example, or give a grainy or flowing texture to a piece, even a bark-like texture.

Add color and shine, and it’s nothing short of a work of art.

Nearly 20 years after his first encounter with a concrete stamp, Colin Hiday, his wife, Gerri, and the rest of the Hiday family have not only built exotic sidewalks and patios, but also made hundreds of concrete pieces of statuary and garden art at their Dungeness Valley shop where they have about 500 molds.

Gerri Hiday paints many of the pieces, which also seals the concrete for a longer life.

For the past year, the Hidays of Hiday Concrete Inc. have been selling their locally made pieces at their company, Stone Creek Statuary and Garden Art, 261533 U.S. Highway 101, in Carlsborg.

Similarly, the fountain pieces, statues and sconces are not imports. Colin and the Hiday family make them from latex molds encased in Fiberglas forms to hold the concrete and molds in shape.

The molds are expensive, he said, because the company is also buying the right to use them from the mold maker.

Making his own molds

Consequently, he said, he is making some molds of his own creation to use in the future.

He has designed and created driveways and walkways with Hiday Concrete for clients around the East Olympic Peninsula, including a 200-foot East Sequim Bay Road driveway and walkway leading to a home and garden area.

The market demand for exotic landscape design has created a growing opportunity for creative concrete work and garden art and design, he said.

“I enjoy trickin’ out people’s yards,” Colin said, adding he has a “secret formula” for mixing his concrete, giving it unique looks.

He has created concrete poles for porch roof supports that could easily be mistaken for tree trunks.

Besides landscape, driveway, porch and patio concrete work, the Hiday crew constructed its first “faux rock wall” at the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Center leading into the tunnel and poured the base for the tribe’s newest totem.

At the top of the rock wall is a planter, part of the tribe’s Highway 101 rest stop and scenic overlook at the foot of Sequim Bay in Blyn.

He said the company can make large concrete rocks at just about any landscape site.

Hiday said the latest in yard design are outdoor kitchens and bars, which he is gradually getting the company into.

He and Gerri Hiday have plans to develop their Carlsborg retail location to exhibit examples of the work they do, including patios and an outdoor kitchen to mingle with their hundreds of garden art pieces displayed on the site and visible from the highway.

For more information, visit www.hidayconcrete.com or phone 360-683-8376.

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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Jeff Chew can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at jeff.chew@peninsuladailynews.com.