Concrete Art-FX

We have recently completed a concrete polishing project for HGTV Show.

We were asked by the wonderful producer of a new interior design show to be aired on HGTV, to polish concrete floors in a house the show was fully renovating for homeowner and for TV broadcasting. We were told that the show name is expected to be BRICK BY BRICK, but at the time of writting this blog (couple weeks later), the HGTV producer had informed me that name of the show is not yet finalized and may change. We will keep you posted as we are informed.

                                                   Before

The basement floor we were asked to polish seemed to be flat and regular. However, as we found out, prior to the new concrete floor pour, had radiant heating installed and on the coldest day of the year, the concrete contractor had scheduled the basement floor to be poured. According to the homeowner, the contractor used windshield fluid ani-freeze to prevent the concrete from freezing prior to getting the cement poured through the basement window onto the foundation and radiant heating. Unfortunately we discovered this when we began to grind the surface with a 60 diamond/metal grit the surface only to discover how exremely weak this concrete floor slab really was.

When our project manager informed me of this problem, we were all beside ourselves, go figure; Here we are, in the process of grinding and polishing for the TV cameras, and concrete floor we have to work with is pure crap!!

We gathered our heads together to determine what we could do to overcome this problem with the concrete. It is well know fact that if you know, and/or plan to polish the concrete floor you cannot add any kind of additives to the cemnt, let alone WINDSHIELD ANTI-FREEZE. The worse part, the contractor pouring the concrete knew it will be polished and did no research to see if he could add ani-freeze to concrete. To make things even worse, as we were grinding the surface we found bits of garbage and even wood chips embeded in the concrete. It was a disaster!  We thought of epoxy floor coating, but the show's interior designer did not want a high gloss coating but rather a natural finish. So we came up with a multi step plan to harden the concrete surface, and turn this disaster of a concrete floor into a naturally polished concrete floor that could be appreciated.

But I must say, nothing like being thrown a curve ball when you are on stage of TV set being filmed. I don't want to bore you with the details how we went about the process, but I will let the picture of the finished polished concrete floor close up do the speaking included here.

                                Close Up of  AFTER

When life throws you lemons, then what can you do but make lemonaid?, This job made us sweat but we pulled it off. We will do a follow up blog when we find out about the show's scheduled airing date on HGTV Canada. This may have been one of hardest projects to do, and we even thought that we can do it, but the final result was appreciated by both the HGTV crew and the homeowner. This why we do business the satisfaction of clients is why we get up every morning to earn the rspect of our clients.

We frequently run into contractors and handy home owners, who have contemplated to try concrete polishing in their home or in the case of the contractor, for their client to save money on having professionals to do polished concrete for them.

Concrete polishing may look simple when you observe the work being done but in reality, it's far from simple. Knowing how to operate a grinding and polishing machine is an art just like any other profession it takes a lot of experience and know how to make a job look good and simple. There numerous factors involved in diamond grinding concrete, such as whether the concrete floor is soft, medium, hard or extra hard, before you can determine which diamond tooling to use. Then you need to know how much presure to apply when grinding and what speed to run the grinder. A professional concrete polisher does this everyday and will select the right approach and diamond tooling for each concrete polishing job in accordance to the concrete floor he has to work with. Remember, you must work the exisiting concrete, unless you are willing to fork out the cash on replacing the entire concrete floor slab? Not likely and why? Using a professional concrete polishing company will ensure you get the best result from concrete polishing.

If that is not enough, finding a quality diamond grinder/polisher to rent or use is very difficult and expensive. If you do find one, you will likely pay about $350.00 per day rental, transportation costs, and more importantly you MUST buy the diamondand resin tooling to accomplish the job. Diamond and resin tooling for the grinding/polishing machine can run you as much as $4,000 and you cannot return when you are finished, which means you will need to absorb the cost into the job.

So before you decide to do a DYI job of concrete floor polishing, think again, is it worth it?