This modest home in Chicago Park, California had flooding problems during the recent rainy season. The old laminate flooring started to warp and peel up. The home owner had a concrete contractor come out and waterproof the slab with Creto Deep Penetrating Sealer. This permanently waterproofed the slap preventing a similar occurrence in the future. The contractor then poured a self leveling concrete overlay over the preexisting slab. Unfortunately the employee who laid it didn’t know what he was doing and used the wrong material. This made it set up too quickly, cracking in places and not leveling out.
Sweet Concrete was hired to save the day. The areas were masked and the floor was wet honed with a floor machine and metal diamond discs. This process smoothed out the floor and got it ready for the next step. A thorough cleaning was done after the grinding to remove any dust left over from the grinding slurry. A two color water based concrete stain was then applied to the floors in an organic pattern. After the stain had cured parts of the stain hadn’t bonded correctly. This was because the previous contractor used the wrong material for the overlay. This was a big problem but nothing that Sweet Concrete couldn’t work out.
To resolve this problem a polyurethane topical sealer was applied with stain added. This particular sealer can have stain added to the sealer which makes it very versatile. Multiple coats were added, one after another, with the stain added. Acetone was used to remove the stain making the pattern come to life. The areas where the original stain came up were completely covered and blended in to the wooden pattern.
The floors came out looking amazing with the “Knotty Wood” pattern and a beautiful matte finish. This was an outstanding save from such a disastrous overlay. Check out the video on the process below.