poured concrete floor

[MiniDoom]

for my new house i was going to tile the basement floor. But recently have seen some poured concrete floors that look 10x better. I'm really leaning towards this. Has anyone done it? Also if you already have a concrete floor, can they stain and polish the existing floor? or do they need to mix the color into a new layer of concrete?
roughly how much did it cost per sq ft?

 

[DAGTA]

If you have an existing floor, you can mix up some finishing concrete and mix in color to make designs.

Last weekend I put down some Quikrete to level off a floor in preparation for hard wood. The designs that showed up were a pleasant surprise. Someday I might do a room just in color/designed concrete. This stuff cost me about $22 per 25sq ft at 1/4 inch thick.

 

[Sasiki]

I have seen some AWESOME looking finished concrete floors.

 

[Oceanas]

You can acid stain an existing slab. Used to do that for a living a few years ago. I wasn't really involved in the numbers game, just the actual work. If you are going to have it done professionally a large part of the cost is determined by how much prep/cleaning must be done to get the slab ready for the acid, if you want any designs scored into the slab, use multiple colors, etc. We used Kemiko stain. A properly done acid stained floor can look absolutely beautiful.

 

[Red Squirrel]

All proper basements are poured concrete these days. The walls in older basements may be cinder blocks and the floor may not be poured as nicely, but there will be concrete. You can still tile the basement if you want afaik just remove the paint if the concrete is painted as the tile cement wont adhere properly if there's paint.

For a basement keep in mind tiles will be cold on the feet so for a washroom you may want to put the heated tiles.

 

[Dubb]

stained concrete can be a pretty cool, and pretty inexpensive, floor. combine it with well thought out saw cuts, and it gets really kick ass. Right now we're doing an entire house as stained slab on grade.

you can stain an existing concrete floor, but the results are less predictable. try to get a small sample done somewhere inconspicuous, and having a concrete guy who knows what he's doing really helps. Also this stuff is often solvent based and pretty nasty, so it might be a right-before-vacation type project.

 

[Wag]

Originally posted by: rdubbz420
for my new house i was going to tile the basement floor. But recently have seen some poured concrete floors that look 10x better. I'm really leaning towards this. Has anyone done it? Also if you already have a concrete floor, can they stain and polish the existing floor? or do they need to mix the color into a new layer of concrete?
roughly how much did it cost per sq ft?

I do in my condo, but we carpeted it over with industrial wall to wall. You'll be sorry in the winter. It gets damn cold, especially in bare feet.

 

[Oceanas]

Originally posted by: Dubb
you can stain an existing concrete floor, but the results are less predictable. try to get a small sample done somewhere inconspicuous, and having a concrete guy who knows what he's doing really helps. Also this stuff is often solvent based and pretty nasty, so it might be a right-before-vacation type project.

Being unpredictable actually generally leads to a more amazing looking finished product, in my opinion. A lot of it depends on what has been on the slab before. Sometimes there can be areas that don't take the stain as well no matter how much the floor is cleaned, and if there is anywhere that has to be ground down it won't stain well in that area.

The stuff we used to clean was actually much more nasty than the stain itself, at least for us. The stain contains acid and is quite nasty. Have to wear good masks to spray and you certainly would not want to be there while it's being done.

 

[Safeway]

Stain it and polish it. Looks awesome.

 

[MiniDoom]

my brother gave me this book, concrete at home by fu-tung cheng and some of this shit is amazing. i wish i had a scanner to upload a few pics. I was going to tile our basement. with dogs coming in and out, sometimes in rain it will be easier to maintain. if we can just take the existing floor, pull up carpet, clean, prep and acid stain it, i think it would look nice and maybe cheaper than tile.

 

[Dubb]

Originally posted by: Oceanas

Originally posted by: Dubb
you can stain an existing concrete floor, but the results are less predictable. try to get a small sample done somewhere inconspicuous, and having a concrete guy who knows what he's doing really helps. Also this stuff is often solvent based and pretty nasty, so it might be a right-before-vacation type project.

Being unpredictable actually generally leads to a more amazing looking finished product, in my opinion. A lot of it depends on what has been on the slab before. Sometimes there can be areas that don't take the stain as well no matter how much the floor is cleaned, and if there is anywhere that has to be ground down it won't stain well in that area.

The stuff we used to clean was actually much more nasty than the stain itself, at least for us. The stain contains acid and is quite nasty. Have to wear good masks to spray and you certainly would not want to be there while it's being done.

the problem we've had is differences in sample vs actual color. once a client selected a warm brown stain, but when it went down on the old slab it looked greenish...puke greenish. I think they wound up going over it again with black just to kill it.

 

[iGas]

I have seen concrete stained floors and counter tops, and they look absolutely amazing. Even better than glass embedded polish concrete.

 

[Oceanas]

Originally posted by: Dubb
the problem we've had is differences in sample vs actual color. once a client selected a warm brown stain, but when it went down on the old slab it looked greenish...puke greenish. I think they wound up going over it again with black just to kill it.

Ugh. I've never encountered anything quite that bad. One time our local supplier ran out of black and we needed it immediately for a job. Couldn't find anyone else with Kemiko black in town so I ended up taking a 6 hour roundtrip drive to pick 5 gallons up from another supplier (that we hadn't done business with before). Put it down and we ended up with a very light rust color. It ended up that they had received a bad batch. Once we got hold of some more, threw it on and it came out fine.