"Restart" - Concrete floor coatings
June 2010 Job of the Month - This project originally started as a simple concrete floor coating for a home in Dallas, Tx, but things got a little more involved after that. It had a thick Spanish tile on the floor that, after being removed, revealed a dirt floor underneath. That was the first time we've ever had the happen. We brought in a concrete truck to fill in the pit, let it cure, then applied a concrete floor coating over everything to tie in the new and old areas. They wanted a gray floor so we just tinted the overlay material to get the correct color. I think you would agree that the new floors really complement the modern décor found throughout the home.
|
 |
|
That was a first! We stopped and consulted with our Dallas homeowner who said he thought it was possible that many years ago this part of the house had actually been part of an exterior patio and they may have just laid some tile down on a bed of grout instead of on a concrete pad. Well a concrete floor coating won't work unless there is concrete underneath it so we had to come up with a solution. We ended up bringing in a concrete truck and pouring about three cubic yards of concrete to restore the floor to its original height. That's not something we do everyday!
We let the concrete set up for a couple of days while we prepped the rest of the floor. There was plenty of stubbornly glued-down wood to keep us occupied and though the total job was less than 1,500 ft2 we hauled over two truckloads of material to the Dallas landfill. Just one load weighed over 9,000 lb. so you can get an idea of just how thick the tile and grout bed they had placed it on was.
As always, we ground the floor to prepare it for the concrete floor coating. Our Dallas homeowner was looking for just a simple gray color which we normally create by just mixing in some pigment with our overlay material. We dove right in and everything went perfect until the last batch. We were in the home stretch, literally less than 100 ft2 to wrap it up when a mistake was made with the amount of pigment being added to the mix. The last part of the floor came out a lot darker gray than the rest of it. That was a no go.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
| |
|
| It was very embarrassing, we've been doing this for many years and pride ourselves on making very few mistakes but this time we definitely dropped the ball. I apologized profusely to our Dallas homeowner who was actually quite amused at how embarrassed I looked. He wasn't worried, he knew we were going to take care of it and we did. The good thing about concrete floor coatings is that because they are so thin, you can put one on top of the other without a problem. We mixed up some new batches and, after carefully supervising the amount of pigment being added, recoated the entire floor. It came out perfect! The home has a very modern décor and the light gray concrete really complements it. Everybody was happy. |
| |
|
|
|
