The world's foremost resource on decorative concrete
There are many benefits of doing polished concrete mockups prior to starting a polished concrete job. These include: Seeing the job site firsthand. Learn locations of things like the power, parking, loading and unloading, water, wastewater disposal, dumpster, elevators and lighting, among other things. Learning how hard the concrete. By […]
Polishable overlays are a popular alternative to polished concrete where the existing concrete slab isn’t a good candidate for regular polishing. Infilling trenches, patching, spalling and removing existing modular floor coverings often result in a concrete surface that doesn’t meet with customer approval. Additionally, wavy concrete and edge curl will […]
When choosing to use colored concrete on a project, there is very often a discrepancy between the owner’s expectations and the reality of the finished job. Two major reasons for this are that manufacturers’ color charts cannot possibly show the true color, and most contractors fail to adequately explain this to the customer.
Welcome to the exciting world of vertical concrete artistry! In this series, we’ll explore in great detail the process of completing a real-world project from start to finish.
Samples, mock-ups and models take the guesswork out of decorative concrete finishes and offer a sense of security for the owner, designer and contractor. They quickly get everyone on the same page before crews permanently place any concrete on the site.
Today’s lesson is one each decorative concrete professional must heed: Creating the perfect project sample is the path to your artistic future.
There is an increase in complaints about the final color not matching the sample or mock-up. In all cases, a small mock-up was created, finished and cured as specified, and eventually accepted by the client. Fast forward to the actual job placement, and all of a sudden the color no longer matched the mock-up sample.
This posh campus of office and parking structures, located in the western Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa Vista about one mile from the Pacific Ocean, contains polished concrete floors and board-formed concrete walls and pillars, but that’s just a taste of what decorative concrete has brought to the 15-acre campus.
This article breaks down three different jobs and how one artistan developed the designs for each project, stage by stage.
You can fine-tune your concrete polishing bid by figuring out before the job begins how the concrete is going to grind, what diamonds you will need and how to prepare. Walk on the slab, pour some water on it, scratch at it and put a diamond on it.
