Stained Concrete: Beauty Without Breaking the Bank
We are just down the road from wine country. No, not the Napa Valley wine country. Woodinville, Washington wine country. With over 9o wineries, Woodinville has become a mecca for wine in the Northwest. Recently, one of those wineries contacted us about their new wine tasting room. They were looking for a cost effective way to treat the concrete floors in the strip mall space that would become their new tasting room. They had a contractor already working on the space and a great design. The only missing element was the budget to make the floors match the rest of the space. We were able to utilize a solvent dye to add color to the concrete and a high performance epoxy and urethane top-coat to offer protection for the high traffic they hoped to see.
When planning a project it is easy to dream. The reality is, the budget usually means making sacrifices and seeing some of those dream fade. Originally the owners were hoping for a chemically stained concrete floor. The mottled look of stained concrete would have gone well with their design. However, the process of chemically staining concrete can get costly and results can be tricky. Since chemical stains produce color through a chemical reaction, where acid reacts with lime in the concrete, different slabs of concrete will color differently. Contaminates introduced to the surface may not be visible, but can appear in the staining process as well. These and other factors make any application a bit tricky to ensure good results.
By using a solvent dye, color can be added to the surface without having to worry about different pours of concrete or patching materials taking the color differently. If the surface is cleaned and prepped properly, it can be colored. By utilizing multiple colors the same variegated effects you get in chemically stained concrete can be mimicked. A solvent based dye dries almost immediately and can be re-coated very quickly saving on installation time as well.
After the concrete has been dyed, it needs to be protected just like you would with an acid stained concrete floor. For this project we used an epoxy primer and a high performance urethane top-coat. The result was a beautiful floor that enhanced the design of the tasting room without breaking the bank.
We would be happy to talk you through some options if you have some concrete and are not sure what to do with it. The rise in popularity of concrete flooring has resulted in many new products at a variety of price points to achieve looks that weren’t even possible a few short years ago.
