Since he seemed to believe that I was a member of some secret floor-polishing society, my friend told me to come over to his place a few weeks back. He wanted me to check out his concrete floor if it's fit to be polished. The floor was a nightmare, however, and I immediately had doubts. Thankfully, I was able to get my contractor to have a look. He said that, while dreadful, the floor still had a chance to be something special.

I recently went back to his place again, eager to see the progress on the floor. What I saw blew me away, and strengthened my astonishment for concrete polishing even further.

One of the main problems, my contractor mentioned, were the cracks that were developing on the surface. While relatively easy to fix, the evidence, so to speak, was very difficult to hide. thus, rather than hide it, he decided to use the cracks as borderlines for a specific flooring pattern.

The surface being prepared, he was ready for coarse grinding. My understanding of the concrete polishing process is limited, but I will try to explain. Basically, concrete polishing involves a series of diamond tooling with progressively higher diamond grits. The lower grits are meant for coarse grinding, which reveals some aggregate which adds design to the concrete.

He used the crack lines as a guide to make a sectioned floor. Each section had a different hue, which he applied before going to the high grits for the polishing finish. He said that this was necessary so that he could close the concrete, locking the colors in.

The result was an astonishing concrete floor. Unlike my own concrete floor, which sported a coffee tint all throughout, this project left a pleasing variety of eye-relaxing hues. And, needless to say, my friend was very happy with how his floor turned out, despite the earlier setbacks.