“Fleur de Lis” – scoring a design in concrete in Shady Shores,Tx
This started out like a standard microfinish overlay project – remove the carpet, grind the floor so that the overlay (resurfacing concrete) will stick properly, apply the overlay, stain, seal, and wax it.
But our Shady Shores homeowner wanted a little twist added to it – a Fleur de Lis. Let’s see how we go about scoring that design in concrete and keep in mind that this is just one of many different designs that are available to score into a concrete floor.
Before starting any design in concrete project we need to get a perspective on size. In this case the Fleur de Lis was a little over 4 feet wide. If it is too small, it just gets lost in the floor, too large and it overwhelms the area.
Location is important, our Shady Shores homeowners wanted it to be an accent piece as their guests entered the home instead of a focal point which is why they wanted it placed it in the entryway.
Once we had decided on those factors the next step in putting the design in concrete was to get a stencil made of the Fleur de Lis. We carefully oriented the stencil on the floor and traced it out.
We then scored the outline of the Fleur de Lis using a special tool as our regular hand grinders can’t cut the tight curves this design has. We are making a light cut in the floor; we avoid going too deep so that it doesn’t become a maintenance issue.
Now, the Fleur de Lis was not the only design in concrete we did for this Shady Shores home; we also scored a border around some of the columns in the room to make them stand out a little. We basically do the same technique, tracing an outline and then following it with a hand grinder to make the line.
The last step in our scoring a Fleur de Lis design in concrete was to stain it. Here we used a water based concrete stain to create a beautiful blackish-brown tone that was also applied to the scored area around the columns so that everything tied in nicely.
To wrap it up we applied the normal solvent based concrete sealer we always use and mopped on a couple of wax coats to give it some additional protection. We think the final result is pretty stunning, hope you do to.
