Stamping & Texturing Concrete

Concrete patios and pool decks have long set a standard for basic backyards. But today’s consumers want much more than the basics and the industry is complying. Due to more efficient tools and techniques, complex designs can be installed quicker, easier and at a fraction of the cost.

Kevin Brown is a soft-spoken, humble-yet-accomplished man who got into the business of concrete work through his family. As he describes it, he knew from a young age that he wanted to follow in the family footsteps.

The 500,000 square feet of stamped concrete pathways and patios at the new Italian theme park Rainbow MagicLand look like no place else on Earth.

You don’t have to be born into the family business to be good at it, but in Emil Gera’s case, it sure helped. Gera’s father, also named Emil, was a union concrete finisher who would take his son along with him to help on weekend projects. Some of young Emil’s earliest memories involve concrete and a trowel.

SurfEtch from Butterfield Color is a water-based mild surface retarder that, when used with fresh concrete, exposes the sands in the concrete for a unique decorative finish. In addition to its aesthetic appeal, it can add slip resistance and is solvent-free. Best of all, it’s easy to apply for even the beginning contractor.

The decorative surface was going to be troweled and stained. But after Brock was hired, he made another suggestion: a stamping job instead, using the Coquina Stone With Sea Shells feathered texture mat from Proline Stamps. Impressions of shells, sea horses and assorted sea life would improve traction and complement the seaside setting.

For a guy who started from the bottom up, Jesse Escalera has managed to make a name for himself over the years through his backyard masterpieces.

Profit is the byproduct of a high-quality decorative job. There is a big difference between learning to stamp concrete and learning to stamp profitable concrete. In this article we will discuss how to set your job up, as well as the installation process.

Stamped concrete is the very foundation of decorative concrete industry. The ability to take concrete and add pattern and color separates you from your competition. This ability also increases a customer’s expectations. Simply put, most customers will not accept a random crack running through patterned concrete, nor should they.

Behind every successful slab of stamped concrete is an accumulation of effort by you (the decorative concrete artist) and your local ready-mix provider. If one participant falls short the project becomes compromised, maybe not to the point of being unsalvageable but still to where it does not meet the goal of most professionals.

A total of 42 awards were presented at the 2017 Sundek Awards Banquet during the company’s 33rd annual convention in Hilton Fort Worth earlier this year.

With little investment in equipment and training, sandblast stenciling will make an incredible profile in your concrete work.

When you’re 22 years old, it’s hard to seriously imagine that you could be one of the founders of your own business with some friends and succeed in doing it.

Many of history’s most beautiful works of art were created for places of worship. These days, decorative concrete is doing its part to beautify churches across the country.

Hong Kong is home to what is billed as the largest quarter-inch stamping job in the world — 600,000 square feet of lines, arrows, and numbers that help condo dwellers park in style.

Custom Concrete Creations Inc., which sells interlocking, swiveling stamps to fit curved borders, plans to corner a whole new market.

Antiquing stampable overlays is taken for granted these days. However, there are many ways to achieve this effect. This method is a quick, consistent and effective way to achieve a beautiful antiqued look with Miracote products.

What is it with the San Francisco Bay area as a hotbed of technological and artistic invention and innovation? Is it the climate, the awe-inspiring Golden Gate coastal setting or the pioneer spirit that lives on in this land of dreams and promise?

Stamping concrete is a process of stretching the surface of the hardening concrete to create a unique indented pattern/texture on an otherwise flat surface.

Paul Schneider is one of the lucky people in this world whose hobby and occupation are one and the same: decorative concrete. “Most people don’t think of a hobby as something you make money off of,” he says. But he does it.

It’s doubtful that any homeowner has found a more elegant way of decorating a neglected piece of land whose main feature is a septic tank field than the owners of the “Hidden Oasis,” a tropical-themed project that blossomed in a residential backyard in Stafford, Va.

Decorative concrete wizard Tom Ralston is a familiar name to Concrete Decor readers for his elaborate, multifaceted homes and backyards. But there’s another side to Ralston’s work: the wildly creative stuff that’s almost pure fun.

“Graceful Curves.” That’s what Scott Cohen and his team at Green Scene Landscaping and Swimming Pools call a recent backyard masterpiece in Malibu, California. Cohen describes it as the ultimate entertaining backyard that has everything and then some — including a pool that makes you feel like you’re in a giant lake.