"Cover it up" - Concrete Floor Covering
This was a small concrete floor covering project we did in Irving, Tx. We used our standard thinfinish overlay material for the concrete floor covering to get rid of the exposed aggregate that the floor had.
The exposed aggregate (where you can see small stones sticking out of the concrete) was not what they were looking for so we proposed a trowel down to cover it up. The trowel down, being a concrete floor covering, buries the exposed aggregate under a new, thin layer of concrete.
We started with a power wash to get rid of all contaminants followed by a very light grinding of the floor to roughen up the stones a little bit so that the new concrete floor covering would stick to them.
As with all concrete floor coverings, proper floor prep is very important so that you don’t have problems with delamination.
Our Irving homeowners knew exactly how they wanted the floor to be scored. They were looking for a certain size stones and pattern and wanted a very thin grout line (the spacing between the stones).
We offer a few options for grout lines. This particular pattern flows with the grout lines almost the exact same width, with very little variation, creating an effect in which the stones almost meld into each other. We also offer patterns with thicker grout lines that are more irregular and more jagged, it just depends on what you like.
The irregular width grout lines are more realistic as normally stones are not cut to fit exactly together like a jigsaw puzzle but this pattern is what the client asked for.
When it came to color for the concrete floor covering, our Irving homeowners also had a specific color scheme in mind. As you can see in the pictures, there are three main colors that were applied to different stones formed by our trowel down process.
They were looking for colors that would complement the brick facade of their home. These really worked well.
Concrete floor coverings work really well over an exposed aggregate as it completely buries it as long as it’s thick enough. Usually when we are placing it over exposed aggregate, we recommend putting down a trowel down or stamped overlay as these are thicker coatings that help hide the stone profile below.
Skim coat overlays are thinner and some of the stone texture can show through. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it just depends on if that is what you want to see. Concrete floor coverings can create just about any decorative effect you would like for your floors, it just depends on your tastes.
