Troy Koskiniemi: Monuments and more in the Northwest

Ten years ago, Troy Koskiniemi downsized radically—from a 7000-sq.-ft. shop to the 1000-sq.-ft. garage at his and his wife Susan’s home because a road project in front of the shop was going to make things dusty and pretty inconvenient. His plan was to build a shop at the house, but that hasn’t happened yet.

“I like having the shop at home,” he says. “The garage was big enough for me to build an office space. It’s worked fine until lately, so I may end up building that shop after all. A 40-by-60 building would be nice. I’m over the ‘grow bigger and hire people’ phase, though, so it will be more to accommodate my work than to grow the business. Before, I had a large shop with a lot of screen printing equipment and was doing a much larger volume. I don’t want those hassles again.”

Troy spent some time in college for graphic design and art, then started doing illustration and airbrush art. That eventually led him to sign work—first as cut vinyl lettering and hand painted signs, then as dimensional signs.

“I learned a lot from the local sign people and the Letterheads meets in the area,” he says. “There’s a great group of sign makers in this area and some very skilled craftspeople. I learned from seeing their work and from everything they shared.”

Developing a specialty

He got his general contractor’s license in 1991 and by 1996 had begun focusing on entry monuments for real estate developments. Today he does entry monuments all over both Washington and Oregon statewide.

“Building big custom signs is a little challenging at first,” Troy says. “You get into a lot of different construction techniques, like sandblasting granite. You run into installation and fabrication challenges—and tight deadlines.

“You have to think about these projects before you start them, or they can wind up costing you more than you are getting paid to build it. You get requests like mounting a sign between two boulders where you have to fabricate the structure on site, then take it apart and bring it back to the shop to finish the fabrication and painting. You have to plan for the time it takes to make the unknown things happen.”

On about a third of the signs, he gets creative input in the lettering and graphics. On the rest, he designs the structure then comes up with an appealing way to present the development’s logo. He works with subcontractors for some of the fabrication, including the masonry work.

He uses timbers and steel for the mountings and Corafoam HDU board for the graphics. Much of the finishing is done with Benjamin Moore Aura exterior acrylic paint.

“I do whatever it takes to get the job done,” Troy says. “Carving, gold leaf, 3D—we’ve done it all. People often come to me with oddball projects and things that take creative fabrication. When you finish one of these large projects that takes you several months of planning and fabrication, you know it’s going to be out there for years and years. It’s pretty satisfying.”

More than just monuments

Along with the monuments, Troy does a lot of vehicle lettering, printing and print brokering. He does a few wraps but says he doesn’t really push them. He also does photography.

“I got into the business towards what seemed like the end of hand lettering as a way to make a living. Computers made it difficult to do that if you wanted to just hand letter. I moved towards the larger projects because they were more profitable and the satisfaction of figuring out and manufacturing the whole project is more rewarding.

“There are still people making a decent living with hand lettering, such as the truck and striping crowd, but it’s not like it was before the computer got involved in the traditional sign shop. Some of the younger crowd today see sign painting as a fun or artsy thing, but you can’t make a living that way.

“You have to turn out a lot of work because it costs a lot of money to survive in the business. You can’t do that by just painting panels. Having said all that, it will be awesome to see the few individuals who will come out of this new sign painting movement and do great things for the industry.

“I enjoy art in general and I think commercial art is a great way to make a living. I really love my work, and the sign business has been good to me. I’m not getting rich, but I make a good living.

“It’s good to be a part of a community of creative sign people and to be friends with most all of the competition. We help each other out, and work together on things sometimes. It makes life good and not so stressful.”

 

“For the background panel,” Troy says, “I laid copper leaf using Dux Quick Dry Size that I rolled on,” Troy says. “Once tacked up, that size gives you about an hour+ to gild. Copper leaf tarnishes, so I clear coat it with Clearshield or urethane clear.”

CNC-carved HDU panel, mounted on a Corten steel structure that has a framework of steel tubing. Corten steel is designed to oxidize and create a natural rust finish. The stones were set by crane onto engineered bases or footings.

“I designed this project,” he says. “I drew the hawk on HDU and hand carved it. Then I finished it with Modern Masters iron finish, using their copper patinas to oxidize it. The lettering was CNC routed, then the background was stage blasted. It was a fun project.”