Wood and Brick Looks Provide Elegant Concrete Solutions

Stamped concrete walkway in Fort Worth, Texas

Chris Post, owner of Elite Concrete Solutions in Fort Worth, landed a second job while creating walkways at the University Park Village shopping center. The owner of Pacific Table, a restaurant at the shopping mall, saw him working on the sidewalks and invited him to lead the remodel of a faux-wood floor and countertop at the popular eatery.

The sidewalk project was only 7,000 square feet, but it took 30 days to complete last November, because the work could only be done at night and the mall wanted only three sidewalk sections worked on at a time. “The stores were still open and operating,” says Post. “It was a complicated job because we had to start it at midnight and be cleaned up and off the property at 9 a.m. To get concrete trucks there at 4 a.m. was difficult!” The walkway sections are 18 feet long by 6 feet wide.

The customer wanted the sidewalks to have the look of pavers. Instead of real pavers, which would heave up and cause tripping hazards, Post used Artcrete’s Faux Brick stencils and specially designed color hardener to create brick, tile, stone and other patterns in concrete. Post utilized a border stencil called Stacked Bond along with a Herringbone stencil. “The stencils were interesting,” he recalls, “because we had to cut them to fit the size. We created texture using a texture roller and then we used Faux Brick Clear Liquid Release Agent to keep it from sticking to the concrete. Everybody was completely satisfied and pleased.”

For the restaurant flooring, Pacific Table’s owner wanted a wood look, but wood is not practical in a restaurant. To accommodate, Post hand-textured 2,000 square feet of flooring. The owner liked Post’s sample and gave the go-ahead for a floor that looks like it is hand-scraped wood. It was finished with an epoxy and a satin-finish urethane.

“We had to grind all the concrete off the existing flooring, apply two base coats for a good binding surface, then use 1/8-inch fabric tape to create a wood plank pattern all by hand, and then add in cross-cut lines.” says Post.

His team worked three planks at a time, spreading a Concrete Colors of Texas polymer overlay from 1/8 inch to 1/4 inch thick, then troweling with a back-and-forth motion to create texture. “When sanded down, this technique gives a hand-scraped look, and hand-scraped wood in Texas is very popular,” says Post, “so recreating that in concrete is a big deal for me.” For color, Post applied colors from Smith’s Decorative Concrete Products, then a 100 percent solids epoxy followed by two coats of satin-finish urethane, all from Arizona Polymer Flooring.

For the restaurant’s bar top and sushi bar, the owner wanted a commercial-grade 4-inch-thick top. Post lightly broadcast green and blue glass from EnviroGlas, then polished it, first using a 30-grit metal bond, then finishing with a 3,000-grit resin bond. The team used a commercial bar form with a large square edge from Z Counterform.