Concrete Overlays & Toppings

Concrete Coatings is a Sundek dealer owned by Scott Burley, Will's uncle. It's a decorative concrete resurfacing contractor handling pool decks, patios, terraces and other exterior surfaces for commercial and residential customers in metropolitan New Orleans, south Louisiana and other points along the Gulf Coast.

These questions came from a couple who were building a new home and wanted polished concrete floors. The main floor is slab on grade, while the second level is slab on an engineered raised subfloor. There were issues during the concrete finishing, which eliminated polishing as an option.

In a city where pawn shops are a dime a dozen, one pawn shop in particular is becoming legendary. Located off the Strip in downtown Las Vegas, the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop is the setting for the History channel’s “Pawn Stars,” a reality show documenting the antics of pawn business veterans

When Bob McDaid began making plans to build iPlay America, his 115,000-square-foot indoor family amusement park in Freehold, N.J., he envisioned flooring to complement two very different settings.

If you’re one of the growing number of contractors making the move from horizontal to vertical, this may be one of your first questions.

Acknowledging that the project was a logistical challenge — beginning with an eight-hour time difference between Texas and Bahrain — Sundek personnel also saw it as an opportunity to show their patriotism and support for the men and women fighting for our country.

A five-star resort will often go the extra mile to achieve the perfect ambiance. But a resort in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, actually went an extra 2,500 miles to Sundek headquarters in Arlington, Texas, to get the decorative concrete deck it wanted for its outdoor restaurant and lounge.

Michael Day of Day's Concrete Floors Inc., North Monmouth, Maine, was hired in 2011 to do some serious makeover work at the Sugarloaf Mountain Ski Resort Hotel in Carrabasset Valley, Maine.

Construction of the National September 11 Memorial was progressing on schedule to meet its target Sept. 11, 2011, grand opening date, when a big problem emerged concerning the twin fountains and reflecting pools built within the footprints where the North and South towers once stood.

Are you in decorative concrete and looking for more work? I bet you are, and if so, I have some good news. Let's listen to Dan’s auto repair business.

Concrete finishes are typically intended to be smooth — polished even. There are polishing machines and sealants aplenty to achieve that flawless look. Careful selection and use of plywood concrete forms can also influence the finished appearance and texture. Various specialty and textured panels are available.

As is the story with most contractors, starting a concrete business isn’t always a straight path. For Nick Dancer of Fort Wayne, Indiana, life threw a lot of obstacles in his way but it never squelched his passion.

A baker knows when there’s a disaster in the kitchen, sometimes a little bit of icing can go a long way toward redemption. Concrete contractors have a similar option with overlays and an unsightly slab: The overlaid section not only looks better but the chemistry behind today’s overlay offerings often creates a much more durable surface than what was already there.

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.

At a Justice, Just for Girls retail store under construction in Charlotte, N.C., Jason Burke and his small crew toss colored confetti as high in the air as the store’s high ceiling will allow. The confetti — 1/4-inch acrylic latex chips — lands in random patterns on the still-wet coated concrete floor.

Imagine an overlay product that contains beautiful flecks of marble and at the same time can be easily matched to any color and is low-maintenance. That’s exactly what the folks at MarbleCrete Mix Inc. had in mind when they produced their signature product nearly two years ago.

Nailing the gold in the O that is the official logo of University of Oregon sports couldn’t have been easy. But here it is, on a dyed and polished cement overlay floor at The Duck Store in the Clackamas Town Center shopping mall, near Portland, Ore.

There’s a brew-ha-ha over craft beers these days. And no wonder — with an average of 1.5 breweries opening daily, according to the Brewers Association in Boulder, Colorado, it’s not a stretch to say new ones are popping up faster than a fresh keg can be tapped.

A decade after he entered the concrete industry as an installer, Keefe Duhon is owner/president of three separate and successful companies based in New Iberia, Louisiana.

Along the Willamette River's eastern shore, where it cuts through the heart of Portland, Ore., there stretches a long walkway, a favorite spot for locals to run or ride along the riverfront.

You find them on the floors of restrooms, kitchens and hospitals, among other places: curved, angle-free baseboards called "rolled radius cove." They've been called "ship's cove," too, because they were invented for use on ships to make floors easier to swab clean.

Concrete overlays’ strength comes from combining specific amounts of portland cement, sand, water and polymer. Sand type is an important component in decorative concrete and concrete overlays because overlays are typically applied thinner than standard concrete, yet still need to withstand the forces of foot and automobile traffic.

Installing an overlay over existing concrete is a cost-effective way to update concrete surfaces by eliminating tear-out costs, minimizing product expense and reducing the manpower needed to overhaul the look and integrity of the existing surface.