Concrete Polishing

Polishing worked wonders when artisans set out to restore an almost-century-old, flaw-riddled floor for a shopping arcade.

Walking the walk, not just talking the talk, is more important than ever for our young industry. As the polished concrete industry enters its second decade, we’re still the infants of the floor coating and floor covering industry, an industry that is worth more than 25 billion dollars annually.

Prepping a concrete floor for polishing is one of the most difficult tasks we face in this industry. We cannot be aggressive like we can when prepping for a coating system, because there will be no coating to cover up the deep scratch patterns. We must take care to remove the surface materials while causing as little damage as possible to the concrete. We must be aggressive while being cautious.

Although a good grinder/polisher will take other types of pads besides diamonds, the industrial version of the gemstone is a must for a wide range of tasks. And, there’s the rub: just as with jewelry, these diamonds are seen as being expensive.

Is the solution to polished concrete maintenance educating the customer on proper procedures, or is it developing better sealers to provide the customer?

The "first cut" is the foundation for the polished concrete floor that you are going to create. But what is a "first cut"? In speaking with a wide range of concrete polishers, I've found that there seems to be three ways this question can be answered.

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.

The time will come when a general contractor, architect or another flooring contractor will ask you to bid on polishing floors in a new construction project.

It’s all about branding with the big-name consumer retail companies these days, and Nike is one of the biggest brand names around.

Beauty may only be skin deep, but the performance qualities of an MQ Whiteman SlabArmor concrete surface are just as impressive as the strikingly good looks the SlabArmor system delivers.

While dyes have experienced an increase in market share in the colored concrete industry over the past few years, it's not unreasonable to say they've enjoyed an unmitigated bull market within the polished concrete arena.

Is it best to polish concrete wet or dry? This is a question that will have to be asked before each job. The condition of the concrete floor, the environment it occupies, the desired look of the finished product, and other expectations and preferences will all play a role in this decision.

Williams and Witherspoon brought their brands — the Serena leisure apparel line and Draper James, Wither­spoon’s Southern-flavored women’s clothing label — to Neighborhood Goods in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas. The store is billed as a “new kind of shopping experience, with brands that will rotate in and out,” the Dallas Morning News reported.

Every year, schools and municipalities spend millions of dollars replacing old worn-out carpet and vinyl composite tiles. The cost of replacing these traditional flooring materials is quite expensive and in most cases not at all green. For the past several years facilities are looking at polished concrete as an option.

We all wish that we could tell our customers, “Screw you! I did the work. Pay me!” I know that in my career I have gotten just about every excuse in the book as to why I wasn’t getting paid for my work. By its very nature, the decorative concrete industry that we love so much allows customers to play with our money.

►Make line cuts with a Dremel rotary tool
►Protect your cords with PVC
►During preplanning, tag trouble spots with orange marking paint
►Use white chalk for decorative applications
►What to do with leftover and mismatched diamonds
►Grind old ceramic or terra cotta tile

So we’re in the early stages of a polishing project after the old VCT (vinyl composition tile) has been removed. We’re progressing with initial grinding diamonds to open the floor, only to have the building owner walk through and complain, “What happened to my floor? What are all those lines? Is my floor ruined?

Floor flatness (FF) and floor levelness (FL) are measurements by which architects can hold concrete placement contractors accountable and provide a quality control level during the initial placement of concrete slabs.

An in-depth study on mix design for polished concrete.

If you are truly committed to service, not just the initial sale, then you're not through when you're done.

If I were a contractor I would take “preexisting” projects over new projects every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it. My dad said we would be willing to do trial services for them in some stores to show them what we could do.

Travel-tested diesel generators, a fleet of polishing machines and a bundle of big-name contracts - all part of how Jeff McCool and his team do decorative concrete in the Deep South.