Concrete Texture Skins

New-and profitable-tricks can be learned by old dogs, including concrete and contractors. Texture skins and color release chemicals are changing the look of concrete, as well as the bottom line of contracting, as more customers want their concrete to resemble more expensive materials and are willing to pay for it.

To meet this demand, contractors are using trowel-in color hardeners, color and clear release agents, and flexible texture skins to impress every pattern imaginable. The result: contractors can now produce concrete that is nearly a dead ringer for more expensive materials, but at a warehouse-store price.

Skinning looks easy enough: When concrete passes the thumb test-impresses only about a quarter inch-release agent are spread. Then urethane or high polymer plastics mats with raised images of slate, granite, sandstone, bricks, seashells, dinosaur footprints, alligator claws, leaves, branches, even geometric patterns, such as compasses and stencils, are laid on the fresh mix and gently tamped.

When the mats are lifted, the concrete has been imprinted with the decorative impressions. Appropriate colors can be mixed into the concrete or spread on the wet surface and worked in before skinning. Stains can be applied after the concrete is dry.

Texturing and coloring can increase costs from 50 to 100 percent, but customers who appreciate value happily pony up their dough. The contractors who take the time to educate the customers and sell them on texturing can raise their prices accordingly and laugh all the way to the bank.

But it's not that simple.