Vol. 11 No. 2 - February/March 2011

The Decorative Concrete Council, a specialty council of the American Society of Concrete Contractors, St. Louis, Mo., has announced the winners of its third annual decorative concrete awards competition.

Let’s get the question out of the way that you undoubtedly are itching to ask: Is it a jungle out there for California transplant Steve Kroo and Concrete Jungle, his Northridge decorative concrete business?

Please take a second to answer this question, because ignoring it could very well cost you a lot of money. Are you a well-kept secret?

The historical structure that now houses the Nashville Dinner Theatre has always attracted attention. During Prohibition times, people slyly used a tunnel in the building to transport alcohol to area nightclubs. Today, it attracts crowds for its dinner shows and performances by local vocalists.

Let me start by being blunt. Almost anyone can squeegee down a couple of coats of topping. But overlays and microtoppings are handcrafted, not generic flooring you buy on a roll. How do you go from doing what anyone can do to creating your own distinctive look and giving customers exceptional projects?

Any time you’re dealing with integral color, the key to success is getting a nice, even distribution of pigment. The key to that, in turn, is managing the water-to-cement ratio in your mix.

The steps you take with your wet-cast or GFRC countertops prior to sealing them will affect sealer success more than the actual application of the sealer. It’s important to gain an understanding of what your concrete is doing, or more importantly, what you are doing with your concrete.

Concrete-making uses water. Cleaning concrete-covered mixers, tools and buckets uses even more water. Add to that the sludge that’s rinsed out and you’re often left with a big mess. Everyone who makes concrete faces this dilemma: what to do with all that dirty water and gritty sludge.

Shotcrete is not a physical product. It cannot be touched or held in your hand. Shotcrete is a process or verb. It is the action of placing concrete to achieve high strengths and low permeability.

I was once a much younger concretist, really impetuous and passionate. I was working for L.M. Scofield Co., and as my wife told me, I worked way too much. So she left me. To be more accurate, she left me in charge of the kids for 10 days while she and her best girlfriend toured a bit of England and Scotland.

It has become pretty clear that polished concrete is the hot market in decorative concrete right now. There was no shortage of equipment and chemical manufacturers touting the latest and greatest at the show, with each making a case for why their system was the best option on the market.

All concrete polishers are aware of the many subpar polished floors out there that are giving polished concrete a bad name. I get several calls each week asking how to fix a bad floor, so I am sure that you are dealing with this as well.

The terms “polishing” and burnishing” are sometimes used interchangeably in the decorative concrete industry to describe two very different processes.

Take an older home on the beach in need of radical change. Add a designer and a concrete contractor, both of whom are comfortable thinking outside the box. Give them carte blanche and as much time as they need. Allow their creative juices to simmer. What do you get?

For years, it seemed to me that people thought stenciled concrete was the bastard child of decorative concrete. I never really understood that.

This house, built in San Mateo County, Calif., by Cheng Design, has the fingerprints of acclaimed precast-piece designer Fu-Tung Cheng all over it.

Have you come across clients who are considering polished, stamped or stained concrete flooring, but who hesitate because concrete is a naturally cold surface?

Arenas and stadiums are a market that is gaining momentum in polished concrete. Between high schools, colleges and professional sports teams, there are a lot of these venues around the country. As they come up for remodel, polished concrete is a great option for the flooring on concourses and even under seats.

Born out of frustration with the long learning curve for mastering GFRC, Cheng Concrete’s NeoMix D-FRC is designed to not only shorten that learning curve for contractors, but also to outperform traditional GFRC in regards to flexural strength and abrasion resistance.

Five veteran contractors and artisans provide insight by explaining where their decorative concrete journeys began, how their skill sets grew and how diversification has affected their careers.

Riviera Brush Co. has been a leader in the concrete brush industry since 1989. They started out by developing their line of Orange-Crete wash brushes for the ready-mix industry. The brushes were designed to stand up to the harsh conditions inherent to the industry — lime, abrasives, muriatic acid and other cleaning agents. They were ideal for cleaning trucks and equipment.

Intended to mimic the look of travertine, this microexposure finish leaves the surface with a subtle texture that complements integrally colored exteriors beautifully.