Brian Oberman, who has been in the concrete industry for 25 years, merged his company with Life Deck Coating Installations about three and a half years ago. As general manager, he’s had the chance to work on projects such as Coasterra, the Beach Terrace Inn and Westroot Tavern and showcase how concrete shines in San Diego.
Coasterra Restaurant
880 Harbor Island Drive, San Diego
Coasterra, a “restaurant, lounge and floating event center” that specializes in modern Mexican cuisine, opened for business last summer. Situated on Harbor Island with beautiful views of the bay and San Diego skyline, it’s part of the Cohn Restaurant Group that operates more than 20 eateries in Southern California and Maui.
For this destination dining experience, the long-established restaurateurs wanted a sleek, minimalistic setting that would complement, not compete, with the location’s stunning panoramic view. They also wanted stylish flooring that was long-lasting, durable and easy to keep clean. They selected a simple, smooth grind-and-seal concrete finish.
Life Deck ground 12,000 square feet of concrete with large planetary grinders of 30-40-diamond grit. Next the three-man crew patched small holes with Westcoat’s TC-29 Concrete Patch and sealed it with two coats of Westcoat’s clear SC-67 water-based polyurethane sealer. As a finishing touch, the crew broadcast 30-grit sand to increase the surface’s slip resistance.
As is the case with most commercial jobs, scheduling was probably the most challenging aspect Oberman says they encountered. Since the crew couldn’t do the job all at once due to logistics, it was segmented into five or six phases and later tied in together. The job was completed in a two-to-three-week span in November 2015.
Westroot Tavern
6025 Village Way, San Diego
An upscale shopping center called for new construction of a 2,400-square-foot two-level gastropub called the Westroot Tavern. It features two large patios with fire features, weekly live music, two full-service bars, 30 beer handles and a chef-driven menu. Like most popular requests for projects, the bar owners opted for a grind, stain and seal process. For color, Oberman used Westcoat’s SC-36 Gray Fast Stain, a deep-penetrating dye that dries to the touch in seconds when used with acetone.
To start off, they ground the concrete and patched it with Westcoat’s TC-29. After that. thye colored it with SC-36 Fast Stain. The contractors then sealed with two coats of water-based polyurethane SC-67 in semi-gloss. This is the same sealer they used on the Coasterra job.
From the dining area and bar to the bathrooms, a small crew of two performed this job in segments in a span of two weeks.
“We work around other trades,” says Oberman, with this one in particular very challenging because of a tight schedule. “We always come in at the end and that’s the prime time when it’s the most hectic.”
The tavern opened in March 2016.
Beach Terrace Inn
2775 Ocean St., Carlsbad
The Beach Terrance Inn is located on the cliffs by the beach in Carlsbad. The Inn has an entryway that literally bubbles over with uniqueness.
The boutique hotel’s manager requested the design. The manager was smitten with a similar floor pattern he’d seen during a trip to Arizona. He showed a photo he had taken to the project manager. Then the Life Deck team had to come up with a way to replicate the look for the inn’s 400-square-foot entryway.
The extremely challenging project started with removing the existing coating. Then we prepped the surface with grinders and scarifier to achieve the perfect adhesion profile. They then applied Texxture-Crete, Westcoat’s textured concrete overlay, along with Westcoat’s water-based stain in Onyx to the surface. Then they sealed the area with Westcoat’s SC-70, a very quick-drying acrylic lacquer sealer.
Next, using various sized grinder attachments and following a mapped out custom design, they created each bubble by hand. They could obtain similar results with stencils or tape, but they chose that method because “We wanted it to look consistently inconsistent,” says Oberman.
Oberman recounts that it was extremely challenging and tedious for the installers. Creating and coloring each bubble individually by hand ensured the pattern didn’t look uniform. After the grinding process, each one was stained in Ivory to create a strong contrast to the Onyx water-based stain that was first applied. Lastly, the entire surface was sealed again with SC-70.
