Someone had emailed me about some pictures that I had mentioned about a concrete job that I had done. What follows is my reply to him and the link for the pictures. I thought some here might want to see them also. Take a look and let me know what you think, I’d love to see what you all have to say.
Thanks
David Gelinas
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Hello John
Thank you for taking the time to drop me a note. What I did is included a link to the site where you can see those concrete pics. By no means would I consider myself an expert on either concrete polishing or acid staining but at the risk of sounding somewhat full of myself, on this last job we (Me and the householder) did a lot of research and spoke with a lot of people. Everyone we spoke with either knew a lot about polishing or a lot about staining. We couldn’t find anyone that had any experience with doing them both. As a matter of fact many of the people that we spoke with said what we wanted to do was not possible, (That is something I love to hear is that something is not possible). The other thing we both noticed was when we were speaking with different people; it seemed that everyone had a different way of doing things. I mean from one extreme to the other. We felt that if that was the case and they were all having good success than, it didn’t really mater what we did we couldn’t really mess it up to bad.
John as you look at these pictures, please keep in mind that there is no roof on the house and because all of the sunlight the pictures are badly washed out and they show very little contrast. I spoke with the young man that owns the house just yesterday. The day after we finished it the framer came in and framed the house and the roof is now on and dried in. The windows will probably go in this week. Out of protection for the floor he wanted to put down rosin paper but never got a chance because he said it was to wet. The irony is that there has been absolutely no damage at all to the floor during the construction process.
You asked what I did so here goes: Fri. A.M. we wet ground down to the steel inlay that is just about 7 feet inside the front door. The most aggressive diamonds that I had were 120 Metals. The steel (because its so hard) pretty much destroyed my 120’s. Then I went across the whole slab wet with 220 Metals, those are the pics where it looks kinda chalky. After that I went over it wet with 220 Resins, those are the pics that are already starting to show a shine. Sat. he came back and stained the slab. Sun. we washed it down with ammonia to neutralize it and then we densified the slab with a sodium silicate. I went back over it dry with 220 Resins, then 400’s, 800’s & 1800’s, all dry. Supposedly we could have skipped the 800’s but neither of us wanted to take a chance. After all, this was I think 1650 sq ft and when I was grinding wet it only took like an hour and a half to get across it with the Cimex. It took just over an hour to do dry. At the end we scrubbed it down with water to remove the dust and that was it.
This floor makes a remarkable specimen because there is so much going on.
1. It is a bare, polished concrete floor.
2. It has been acid stained, two colors.
3. It has an inlay
4. It has exposed, polished aggregate
5. Sections of the aggregate are also acid stained, two colors.
Absolutely amazing stuff.
Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think. This floor was a blast to do. I hope you can get some idea of what the end result is from the pics, but one important thing that you can’t tell from the pictures is; what the floor feels like. Yes, what the floor feels like. The only way I can describe it is that it actually feels soft. I know it doesn’t make since to say concrete feels soft but this actually does, it’s just something you have to see and feel to believe. If you have any question or would like to talk about concrete or marble please feel free to call any time.
http://community.webshots.com/user/david_gelinas
Take care,
David Gelinas
727-896-0004
