Concrete Floors

rosullivan

I am looking to pour a concrete floor in my new house extension. I have seen floors that have a very nice concrete finish that looks as good as stone (but presumably is much cheaper).

If anyone has seen the floor in the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, the floors there are concrete - there also appears to be some rough sand/aggregate and crushed shells mixed in and the floor surface is polished. The end result is an "industrial look" which is actually very nice and has much of the colour (dark grey) and look of a stone floor.

Anyone know how to do this? Is it a case of simply adding nice crushed shells to the regular concrete floor mix? Is there a resin of some kind added for polishing? How are they polished?

gtijohnny

It is simple to add the shells to the mix or seed them on the surface of the concrete during the pour. The polishing part is the hard part. It requires specialised equipment. First they grind down the surface and then polish it up using diamond discs. It isn't that cheap really though because of the equipment and labour aspect of the work. It ends up being a long lasting, easy to maintain and durable surface though.

Quazzie

You cut also get some beer bottles (Green, Brown etc) and break them up to really small pieces and they would add a really interesting twist when its polished up. Get as many different colours as you can for a very random, glistening, colourful finish.