Concrete Overlays & Toppings

Metallic floor coatings are a very exotic-looking flooring option. Unlike with solid-color pigment or chips, no two metallic floors are alike.

A couple of homeowners in West Milford, N.J., were looking to enhance the curb appeal of their house by enhancing the front entryway. They initially contacted us about the possibility of resurfacing concrete steps leading to the front door and pouring a new sidewalk from the driveway to the steps.

It has been said that mistakes in life are what build character, and the same can be said about finishing concrete. Your finishing technique can make the difference between an almost perfect finish with clearly visible blemishes and an artistically rendered hand-troweled surface filled with character.

The floors of this 80,000-square-foot outdoor mall on the island of Kauai were patchy, cracked and worn out. One sweeping restoration changed everything.

Back in the ’60s, when epoxies first came along, they were often specified in food-related areas because of their ease of cleaning and resistance to germs, he says. Ramy remembers the old guys didn’t want anything to do with epoxy, so they’d paint the walls and the young guys would handle the floors.

These murals are the work of David Seils, an Asheville, N.C.-based designer, artist and relief sculptor. He applies an overlay to the walls to create these intricate, one-of-a-kind pieces.

Teamwork, expertise and a carefully picked set of products were the secrets to success during a recent concourse floor coating job at Raley Field, home of Sacramento’s minor-league baseball team, the River Cats.

You can bet your boots that it wasn’t easy to overlay the three glittering, aggregate-spiked ramps that lead down from the VIP lounge to the dance floor in the nightclub of the Wild Horse Pass Casino.

From commercial kitchens, fire stations, spas and salons to basements, garages, veterinarian clinics and airport hangars, epoxy materials are being applied to concrete floor surfaces.

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.

Here’s a novel, fast and inexpensive way of saw-cutting curves on concrete overlays or toppings, using a 1⁄4" diameter PVC pipe, 4" grinder and shop-vac.

Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport put its money down in a bet on a vibrant, colorful and imaginative new look for the airport’s Terminal 1 ticketing and baggage claim area.

The simple yet powerful design of this memorial included the piece of wreckage from the World Trade Center and a map of the Northeast coastline of the United States on concrete pavement that approaches the tattered beam. The map identifies the coastline and the three crash sites of that dreadful date.

First Federal Savings Bank, Sheridan, Wyo., asked Doug Carlton if there was an overlay that could improve their cracked, uneven parking lot. He told them no. The crack pattern shows a problem beyond random cracking. He guessed that the concrete is too thin or not properly reinforced, or that the subgrade had failed.

People who know Ted Swaldo weren’t surprised last year when the Gervasi Vineyard & Italian Bistro began expanding.

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.

Pablo Aviles, who heads Bomanite’s Mexico franchise, testifies to the value of the exchange that takes place between corporation and franchise. “Support from Bomanite has been crucial. It keeps us on the cutting edge and informed,” says Aviles, CEO of Concretos y Pigmentos S.A. de C.V., Mexico City.

John Buhler started a business in 1961 with a tiny office, a modest warehouse and terrazzo flooring as his business lifeblood. More than 40 years later, his wife and daughter are carrying out his legacy in the form of the widely-renowned decorative concrete operation known as Super Stone, Inc.

AquaFlex, a proven resilient coating, is in demand among luxury hotels in Las Vegas, including Mandalay Bay, which has used it twice, and the Four Seasons, an iconic, art deco-inspired hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

This column has little to do with discussions of intuitive freestyle art versus disciplined mechanical graphics, or with criticism of superfluous decoration as contrasted with really spare concrete - my normal "literary" territory. It's a column about me and a museum. It's a tale of two topping slabs.

Ideas for what to do — or not to do — with cracks in overlays.

The moment you step through the doors of the Children’s Discovery Museum in central Las Vegas, you know you are in for a treat. The museum promises in its mission a “vibrant and engaging experience” for children from all walks of life.