Concrete Overlays & Toppings

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.

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.

Decorative concrete is going to the dogs. Or at least that’s the impression visitors are getting at Paws by the Lake, a pet boarding facility that opened recently in Avon Lake, Ohio.

A small sampling of helpful hints shared at demonstrations sponsored by the Decorative Concrete Council during the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Concrete Contractors.

Ever notice the broad range of opinions that exist regarding concrete overlays and how they work? Take color hardener, for example — not everyone uses the product, but most agree that it is good and provides excellent results. Why then with overlays does such a spectrum of opinion and emotion exist?

A step by step process of an overlay concrete floor with an acid etch stain process.

This golf course was going to be on national TV, and its owners wanted it to look good. Decorative concrete helped get it ready for its closeup.

Four manufacturers of concrete resurfacing and repair products took on the challenge presented by the Operative Plasterers & Cement Masons International Association (OPCMIA) Local 528 last July in Seattle.

For Martin R. Smith, president of Rockerz Inc., running a successful business is all about the people on your team. “I’m really driven, myself,” he says, “and I like to hire people who rise to the challenge. Personality, to me, is what sets certain people apart.”

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.

Michael R. Jensen is CEO and artist at Atlanta Concrete Artist, billed as a purveyor of “exotic designer flooring.” He recently completed an epoxy garage floor for a car enthusiast in Sandy Springs, Ga.

Besides being used to make thin yet durable countertops that don’t easily chip or break, a mix of PVA fibers and ductile concrete does an excellent job of fixing cracks in concrete.

When your country calls you to do a job, how much should you charge? That was the predicament Dick Krach, CEO of Sundek of Washington, came face to face with when his secretary fielded a call from someone at a “white house” concerning a pool deck that needed repair and some sprucing up.

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.

I’m not a fan of overlays unless they’re necessary, I continually compete against knockdown finish companies that prefer them. Most of my competition uses overlays on pool decks and patios no matter what. This gives me a unique spin to compete against them.

When working with stamped concrete overlays, experts caution you to keep your eye on weather and temperature conditions

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.

Chris Sullivan offers quick and informative answers to your 'not-so-technical' concrete questions.

In 2005, race-car driver Dan Wheldon received the first-place title at the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race (also known as the Indy 500) and, along with it, the 2005 Indy 500 Pace Car, a new Corvette convertible.

There are four different overlay systems used in creating decorative concrete floors: microtoppings, stampable overlays, multipurpose overlays and self-leveling overlays. All have different characters and makeups with which to achieve decorative looks.

I have an exterior raised wooden deck that has a cement-based overlay applied to the top. The area that is under roof is fine, but the area that is outside is failing.

Last fall, Architectural Concrete and Design Inc. was tasked with retrofitting the concourse of nearby Valley Fair Mall with a stampable overlay system. The specifications dictated that the selected concrete system was to be installed over existing ceramic tile without any demolition.

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.