First, the guys used steel trowels to spread the tinted overlay material onto the patio. No one was sad to see the ugly gray cement go! Next, they enhanced its appearance by scoring or cutting the overlay into an individual stones pattern using a hand held grinder.
While the purpose of some floor resurfacing techniques is to create a seamless and uniform surface, the point of this trowel down method was to mirror what one would normally see in nature – stones of various shapes, sizes, colors, and textures. The beauty of this technique is that it creates a truly custom, one-of-a-kind floor.
Once the guys had finished scoring out each stone, they were finally ready for the custom part of the project – staining the floor resurfacing material.
We sprayed two coats of a water based stain to the entire area to give it a nice brown tone and followed that up with randomly applied darker highlights.
Next came the most labor intensive part of the job, filling in the spaces between the stones with a dark brown grout that gives the pattern a little more definition, it’s not a step we often do but it does give it some distinction.
We wrapped it all up with two coats of a protective solvent based sealer. The homeowners were thrilled with the results, and look forward to enjoying years and years of sunsets on their new, built-to-last patio.