The polished concrete – floors with luxuriant aspect for your house

Service Description

The polished concrete – floors with luxuriant aspect for your house

Well, if I was to choose for my house between imprinted concrete floor and the polished concrete floor I would choose without the slightest hesitation the last one, though the imprinted one can take wonderful rustic appearance after which I melt pure and simple. And then why I place it on the second position?

Because if you want it to look flawless it needs periodic refreshing of the above coating layer. And I really do not want to see myself doing this year after year, until the end of life. Better I go on a vacation!

You can find more details about imprinted concrete technology, and its main advantages and disadvantages of the article here: Imprinted concrete flooring in the interior designs.

What is it and where it can be used polished concrete?

A polished concrete floor can be made from zero by covering the work surface in concrete, but it also can be obtained through a thorough polishing of an old concrete surface. The concrete composition may be in granules of marble, granite and / or other types of rock.

It’s good to know that the mixed one with granules of granite is hardest to be polished. In any of these cases but it requires special professional machines that polish, clean and smooth the work surface, gathering also the released dust with the help of powerful vacuum cleaners supplied.

By repeated grinding is reached in the lower layers of material, and to finally you get incredibly smooth and shiny surfaces that do not require protective varnishes, as happens in the case of finished floors by imprinted technique of concrete. Basically, the more it penetrates inside the cast substrate, the more spectacular is the final result.

Polished concrete floors are used especially in arranging the show-rooms, industrial plants, deposits, cafes, bars and restaurants, but also in interior design of residential spaces. In industrial and public spaces the polished concrete floor seems to overthrow the epoxy floors because they are less demanding when it comes to maintenance, they do not stain and they have a longer lifespan.

Execution Steps

If you want to cover the floors of your house with polished concrete floors you should know that you can not achieve this without the help of a professional team. Discuss with them to determine if they would handle only by the polishing stage or they will pour all the concrete which follows to be finished later.

If you already poured the concrete, simplify things a little, you can go straight to the second stage – the grinding and finishing of the floor. It must be said that an old concrete that is good (no cracks, holes and visible cracks) is going to get better results than a recent cast material. Therefore it is very important to make sure that the concrete surface is very, very well dried.

The first step involves the repeated grinding (up to 4 or even 5 times) of the work surface with the professional equipment equipped with diamond discs with grain of different sizes to remove the upper coarse layers of concrete. The grain abrasive grinding discs should be changed as it gets into the lower layers of the floor.

After completion of this stage that you can remove up to 3 cm in thickness of surface, it is recommended applying a solution designed to strengthen and confer a greater resistance to floor in case of shocks and moisture.

After drying of this, it is moved to the final polishing stage, thus eliminating the most imperceptible imperfections of the floor that gets in this way an incredible sheen that reflects the light in an absolutely spectacular way.

Now it is applied one or more layers of special coat especially designed to seal the finished surface that resembles the texture and the appearance of the marble and natural stone floors.

The advantages of polished concrete floors:

– Incredible resistance to shock;

– Very long life; it is said that a polished concrete floor will last as many years as the house in which it is assembled;

– Incredible lustre that keeps the look throughout the life of the floor;

– Although they are glossy, they are not slippery even when they are wet, making them excellent especially in decorating of the wet areas such as bathrooms, kitchens, hallways, balconies, terraces or cellars;

– Periodical rebuilding, varnishing and polishing are not required;

– These floors are suitable both in finishing floors of public and industrial spaces and in the residential ones, decorated in modern minimalist style, industrial, Mediterranean, Scandinavian or even classic and they can be of different colours.

Disadvantages:

– The biggest disadvantage of a polished concrete floor is its hardness; if you fall you can hit hard enough;

– Without a doubt, the concrete is a cold material, but this defect can be corrected by installing in advance of a floor heating system underneath the concrete layer;

– If it is not done quite as it should be without joints and cracks and they are not appropriately treated with special chemicals, as i mentioned above, under the polished concrete floor the water can infiltrate and accumulate, which will lead, in time, to the formation of mould.

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