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Nine ways to finish a concrete slab
Polishing, resin coatings, decorative finishes, restoration and safety treatments. Which one is right is a conversation about your slab, not a pick from a list.
Every one of them
Starts the same way
Diamond grinding opens the slab and takes off sealer, glue, and whatever coating came before. Nothing bonds to a closed surface.
Cracks, pits, and spalled areas get filled with products that move the way the finish over them moves.
A hundred percent solids base coat goes down. No solvent leaving the film as it cures, so the thickness you put on is the thickness you keep.
On a flake floor, chip goes into the wet base to refusal, then the loose material comes back off once it sets.
A polyaspartic clear locks it in. It holds up to UV, so the floor stays the color it started.
How to pick between them
Most people arrive having seen a floor they liked in a photograph. That is a reasonable start, but the room decides more than the picture does. We work through it in this order.
Start with how the floor gets cleaned
This is the question that settles most of it. A floor that gets swept and occasionally mopped can take almost anything. A floor that gets hosed down, hit with degreaser and steam cleaned every night is a much shorter list, and in a commercial kitchen it usually comes down to urethane cement. People tend to start with how a floor should look. We start here, because a finish that cannot survive the cleaning routine will not last no matter how good it looked on day one.
Then what goes on it and what gets dropped
Hot tires pull at a coating in a way ordinary traffic does not, which is why garage floors get specified differently than basements. Forklift wheels, pallet corners and dropped tools argue for a thicker build. Chemicals matter less than people expect and more than they realize at the same time: a spill that gets wiped up is nothing, a spill that sits overnight is a different conversation.
Then moisture, which decides more than anything
Concrete on grade can pass vapor up through the slab for its whole life. If that moisture has nowhere to go and you put a sealed coating on top, pressure builds under the film and eventually lifts it in sheets. This is the most common cause of a floor failing that had nothing to do with the installer’s workmanship. It is also testable before anybody commits, and on a slab we have doubts about we would rather test than hope.
Only then, how you want it to look
Color and finish are the last question, not the first, and by the time the first three are answered the list is usually short. That is not a limitation. It is the difference between a floor that looks right for a decade and one that looks right for a season.
Prep is most of the job. The finish is the part you see.
Kortni Brewster, owner
What goes wrong with resin floors
- A coating that peels in sheets. Almost always a bond failure, and bond failures are prep failures. Either the slab was not ground open, or something was left on it, or moisture underneath pushed the film off. The finish itself is rarely the culprit.
- Bubbles and pinholes. Air coming out of the concrete while the resin is still wet, usually because the slab was warming up as it cured. Timing the pour against the temperature of the slab rather than the air is how you avoid it.
- A floor that turned yellow. Ordinary epoxy is not UV stable. In a garage with a window or a patio in the sun it will amber over time. That is why the top coat on our systems is polyaspartic, which holds its color.
- Flake that looks blotchy. The broadcast was not taken to refusal, so the chip density varies across the floor. It shows up clearly once the clear coat goes over it, and it cannot be corrected afterward without recoating.
Keeping one
Day to day, a resin floor wants sweeping and a damp mop with a pH neutral cleaner. That is the entire routine. What it does not want is anything harsh or abrasive, because a floor that gets scrubbed with the wrong thing loses its gloss long before it loses its protection.
Polished concrete is the same idea with less to go wrong, since there is no film to damage. Dust mopping keeps the grit off, and grit is what dulls a polished floor over time by acting like sandpaper underfoot.
Put mats at the doors. Most of what wears a floor comes in on shoes and tires, and a mat at every entrance does more for the life of a floor than anything you buy in a bottle.
Every photograph on this site is our own work. More of it is in the gallery.
Questions
Which system does my floor need?
It depends on three things: what the slab is like, what the room is used for, and how the floor gets cleaned. A garage and a commercial kitchen can both be called epoxy jobs and need completely different systems.
Can you do more than one system in a building?
Often that is the right answer. A shop might get polished concrete in the showroom and urethane cement in the wash bay, because those rooms have nothing in common.
Do you have references?
Yes, matched to the kind of job you are asking about.
Do you install over existing coatings?
Only after the old one comes off. Coating over a failing system is how you pay twice.
Residential and commercial both?
Both, in roughly equal measure.
Not sure which one?
That is normal, and it is what the visit is for. Call (205) 238-8111.