Concrete Decor's Current Articles

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.

For those of us who work in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe, we take for granted the quality of our everyday materials, let alone how easy they are to obtain. In developing countries, the amount of time and cost involved in getting everything needed for a job can be staggering. But staggering to who?

Before there was stamping, before the emergence of acid staining, an exposed aggregate finish was the decorative concrete choice by many.

There's more to color hardener than color. The material inspires a chemical reaction, and it works best when worked in with a float. Timing is essential, and so are the right tools.

When it comes to resinous quartz flooring, there are two basic ways to approach the installation. You can broadcast the quartz onto a floor coated with wet epoxy, or you can mix the epoxy and quartz together -- making what is often called epoxy mortar -- then trowel it on.

Each slab of concrete is unique, polishing it can require a lot of experience and often involves the attendant mistakes. Advanced Floor Products in Provo, Utah, decided to develop a concrete-polishing technology to eliminate some of the guesswork.

The Concrete Promotional Group of Greater Kansas City has announced its annual Excellence in Concrete Awards. The awards recognize outstanding work in concrete construction in the greater Kansas City area, comprised of parts of Missouri and Kansas.

Concrete Countertop Solutions has developed an alternative countertop form that will help create cast-in-place countertops with a variety of edge styles. Z-Counterform reduces labor time and doesn't require any double-sided tape or drilling into kitchen cabinets.

A number of new technological innovations give today’s contractors more choices when they’re looking to make an impression.

There is a famous paperback called “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White. Many writers treasure it as a guide to writing clearly and succinctly while avoiding common grammatical errors. The handbook itself is a model of clarity.

Let me start by being blunt. Almost anyone can squeegee down a couple of coats of topping. But overlays and microtoppings are handcrafted, not generic flooring you buy on a roll. How do you go from doing what anyone can do to creating your own distinctive look and giving customers exceptional projects?

Polymers aren’t as colorful as pigments, acids and other raw materials used in decorative concrete. But because they help thin cemetitious toppings hold together, they are just as important.

Consumers, often blown away with the low prices of desktop inkjet printers, forget to consider the additional cost of ink cartridges which put many of them on a first name basis with the folks at the office supply store. If you’re selling decorative concrete as no-maintenance, you could be missing out on tapping into the same sort of profit center those cartridges represent, either through selling products or providing maintenance services— or both.

We sat down with some experts in concrete and ask them for advice on stripping concrete as well as their best tips and tricks.

Radiant heat floor coverings at-a-glance Here’s an overview of typical radiant-heat floor covering products and how they compare to decorative concrete.

Hats off to Jeff Bach of Bach Custom Coatings of Oregon City, Oregon, for being the concrete highlight of the recent Street of Dreams, an annual showcase of new luxury homes in Portland that was held this past summer. This was the third Street of Dreams Bach has participated in.

When we think of sculpting, most of us probably picture statues or abstract artistic shapes, not a combination of walls and steps and terraces that enhance the natural surroundings. Yet that is what the sculpting of a hillside is … shaping the landscape into an attractive blend of man-made and natural elements.

For many contractors, a shop or industrial vacuum may be an afterthought. At the very least, you may not put a whole lot of time into choosing the vacuum that specifically fits your company's needs.

Catty-cornered northwest of the Indiana Convention Center, the JW Marriott Art Plaza has become a city landmark and a tribute to Hoosiers statewide since its grand unveiling in March 2010.

The hardscape around the Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center at 535 Barnhill Drive is a beautiful addition to the Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) campus.

In 2011, the city of Carmel, Indiana, revamped its major roadway, the Keystone Parkway, as part of a multiphase project to lower the grade under six major intersections. This created new interchanges and no traffic lights for north-south traffic over a five-mile stretch, while six new roundabouts managed east-west traffic.