Ryan Neal of SBR Concrete was hired by a former client to create a basement floor that had to be not only easy to clean, but also unique. The end result was a floor made with hand-shaped rectangular “stones,” each individually colored so that no two would look exactly the same. Neal began the project by grinding the entire 2,700-square-foot basement. Then he applied Elite Crete Systems Thin Finish colored with black SYPP colorant. Next, he applied a texture coat of Thin Finish to the entire floor with a 6-inch steel trowel. Once everything was dry, Neal carved grout lines onto the surface with a tile scribe to get the look of individual stones.
The goal for each stone was for no two to be alike. The pieces were coated with Elite Crete Systems E100-UV1 epoxy tinted with different colors of Elite Crete’s Reflector Enhancer. Additionally, Neal troweled epoxy onto some of the stones with a plastic putty knife, causing more of the black base to show through, while painting epoxy onto other stones with a 3-inch chip brush, allowing more epoxy to pool and cover the trowel texture. “The Reflector Enhancer falls off of the high spots of the trowel texture to achieve a tinfoil look,” Neal says.
In total, only five different colors of Reflector Enhancer were used (Russet, Brass, Orange Gold, Charcoal and Green) but Neal mixed them together to create even more colors. The colors also vary because of the application process, achieved with either the putty knife or the chip brush. “I did not want a uniform and painted look,” Neal says. “I wanted variation even between the stones colored with the same mixture, thus the thin or thick application.”
To finish off the project, the whole floor was coated with Clear E100-UV1 epoxy to fill in grout lines and smooth the surface, and then three coats of floor finish wax were applied. In all, the project took Neal and his crew two weeks to complete. The floor had to be completed in two phases due to the client’s pool table and exercise equipment, which could not be moved out of the room.
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