Concrete Decor's Current Articles

Looking for a way to expand your business’ offerings or add a little more creativity to your life? Either way, the vertical surfaces market may be for you.

Through what Laticrete channel manager Jeff Bonkiewicz labels “connections,” a diverse group of Spartacote resinous flooring and Laticrete salesmen, company representatives and contractors teamed up to install a 13,000-square-foot floor for a new craft beer facility in Ogden, Utah.

While hand-mudding vertical concrete projects is the preferred method for getting a working surface ready to be shaped and carved, for bigger jobs it’s not necessarily efficient.

Enter a spray system.

Of the Concrete Decor Show’s top 35 most-attended courses, some topics emerged that were more popular than all the others. First on the list are countertops, followed by polymer overlays and coatings, and polishing concrete.

Decorative Concrete LIVE! presented the Mall of Concrete at World of Concrete 2018 to display concrete’s versatile uses in retails settings

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.

The 500,000 square feet of stamped concrete pathways and patios at the new Italian theme park Rainbow MagicLand look like no place else on Earth.

The newly overhauled project took a decade of planning and is a destination that is exceptionally walkable and livable. Designed by landscape architects at James Corner Field Operations, this sleek and modern project includes more than 2 million pounds of custom precast concrete from Tectura Designs.

All across the country leading decorative concrete contractors are going green — no matter what colors their clients request. Some contractors are emphasizing green marketing messages in their advertising, brochures, Web sites and sales presentations. This article examines two leading contractors to answer the question: Does green marketing give you a competitive advantage that wins business?

Placing and finishing concrete to maximize the visual appeal of integral coloring starts at the bottom— with a well-draining, compacted aggregate and consistent subgrade. It’s well worth the time and effort to get it right and give decorative concrete a great start to standing up to the elements.

Take a closer look a the winning designs of the 2009 Concrete Counterop Design Competiton.

A big thank you to our sponsors, Preitech, Concrete Countertop Institute, Cimarron and Alpha Professional Tools.

Lately, polished concrete floor care with the use of nonwoven diamond floor-pad technology (instead of bonded abrasives) has been promoted at conventions, conferences, and in concrete polishing articles everywhere we turn. Just how important are these pads to our polishing industry?

Similar to texturing walls and ceilings, texturing concrete adds color, texture and a lot of new business opportunity.

Learning the necessary skills required for this type of concrete work produces high-quality results? Concrete Decor shares some thoughts!

Todd Scharich was recently appointed decorative concrete specialist for the American Society of Concrete Contractors and its Decorative Concrete Council. The ASCC already had a concrete hotline, but with Scharich aboard since October 2012, it now has a dedicated Decorative Concrete Hotline available to members on a 24/7 basis.

Few things can compare to freshly sealed concrete. Hues of hidden color explode the minute a coat of fresh sealer makes contact with the concrete’s surface. Customers smile with satisfaction and concrete artisans swell with pride.

Sealers and coatings, for the most part, go through the same phases as they dry and/or cure. Before explaining these phases, it is important to know that while all sealers and coatings dry, some also cure as they dry.

Discovering the right tools and techniques can make pictures in concrete very fun and rewarding.