Practicality of Concrete

The floor shown on the left was my inspiration color.
In the last showroom I designed, I used the concrete slab as the finished floor. We didn't have a big budget for wood or stone tile floors, so we thought we would work with what we had, concrete. Even then, we found out that concrete could be expensive if you go the route of an overlay, a stamped pattern or a highly polished mirrored like finish. We went for economical route by resurfacing and adding a stain to the existing surface.

We received so many complements on the floor that I laugh when I remember the trauma involved.

Everyone who stopped in wanted to know how we achieved that color. It was an acid wash base of terra cotta and verdigris and it turned out fabulous. But fabulous is never easy.

We wound up doing it ourselves, or rather our GC was brought in to fix it. It was a lot of trial and error. At first, we got 2-3 quotes from different concrete sub contractors to do the work. I was ready to hire one company who's references checked out great. Then, the first contractor who's original bid was higher than all the others came back, made us an offer to reduce the price as long as we let him use the showroom floor to advertise his work. That sounded fine. If he wanted to bring his clients to our showroom to look at his work, why not?

What do they say about a deal to good to be true? You know what comes next. We gave him the deposit, he sands the floors, and then we never saw him again. He gave us every excuse in the book why he couldn't come back to finish the job. We waited as patiently as we could, but it was costing us thousands due to his delaying the work. We were on a deadline to open the store and we couldn't wait for him to come back and finish the work himself. Our general contractor Julion, came through like a champ, learned how to stain the concrete out of necessity to get the job done quickly.

The old floor was carpet and it had a lot of glue residue that had to be sanded off. What came next was a black base. It looked like asphalt and I was really nervous I had made a huge mistake. My heart was in my throat for two days until I saw the transformation take place. The chemical stain was applied in two colors in layers to achieve the coppery worn patina of the floor you see in these pictures. How they did it exactly, I don't know. We rented a sanding machine and a buffing machine, a lot of mops and rags and got it done! The only maintence required is mopping the floor and an annual maintenance job to keep it buffed to a semi polished state. Concrete Network is a good place to start for more information.
Click here for information on the type of floor we installed. Stained Concrete: The Art of Acid Etching Staining concrete is one of the most popular applications for transforming concrete slabs. Often referred to as colored concrete, homeowners, designers and builders are drawn to stained concrete because of the unique outcome that can be achieved combining colors, application techniques, etc., on cement flooring and other substrates. The results are limited only by the creativity of those involved in the stained concrete process.