Concrete floors are moving out of the garage and basement and on up into living rooms, kitchens and even the bedrooms of homes.
When you first see these engraved, acid-stained or epoxy-coloured concrete floors you may feel compelled to touch them and run your hand over the surface. You may ask yourself, "Is it stone? Is it granite? Is it marble?"
The colours may give it away as being man-made. New acid-stained concrete flooring tends to be red or yellow or blue – anything but cement-grey. These modern-looking etched, polished and epoxy-coated floors may also have a lustre that catches the light and makes them glimmer and shine as if they'd been hand waxed.
Lie down on the floor and you'll see that it's dense and textured. This stuff on the floor is the same stuff that you played hopscotch on or skidded your bicycle wheels upon. It's just prettier – much prettier – than the old driveway.
If you've ever curled your toes around the edge of a swimming pool before diving into the water, you'll think you know how this concrete feels. It should feel smooth, you'll think. But this new concrete flooring is almost glass-like to the touch.
"Once it's polished, it can be as shiny as a piece of glass and almost indestructible. It's bullet-proof," said Roy Chorneyko, owner of Custom Engraved Concrete.
It turns out that the indestructible properties of concrete, which make it perfect for building foundations and garage floors, are also what make it suitable for a boy's room, a laundry room or even a kitchen.
"If you spilled spaghetti on an epoxy-coated concrete floor, you could wipe it up. If it's in a heavy traffic area of the house, we would coat it with poly-urea and it would be scuff resistant. You could drive a car on it," Chorneyko said.
Sub-flooring needed
If concrete is to be put into an upper level room, reinforcing sub-flooring will be required.
The contractor will protect the base of the walls before spraying the floor with acid. Next the acid is neutralized with a chemical and allowed to dry for 12 hours before it is coated with a clear protective epoxy.
The epoxy may make the concrete slippery when it is wet, so if a non-slip texture is requested, it is added at this point.
The artistry is added with the different coloured epoxies. Usually the contractor will mark off the design with chalk.
"If you want it to look like square tiles, we paint the floor with one solid colour and then use chalk to mark the lines and use a different colour for the grouting," said Remon Jaram, owner of Epo-tech.
It is labour-intensive to make concrete have the appearance of tile, and therefore more expensive, but in some ways epoxy-coated cement may be healthier in a home environment than ceramics.
"There is no grout line to build bacteria and the grout doesn't discolour. There is also zero absorption, so oils and battery acids that may spill in a garage can be wiped up. Same with salt. It is easily cleaned up," Jaram said.
Epoxy-coated concrete is also waterproof, making it ideal for basement laundry rooms.
"You could have a flood. You could have your basement full of water, and it wouldn't matter," Chorneyko said.
Both contractors agreed that concrete is cold to the touch and may feel hard underfoot. But it's no colder or harder than ceramic tiles.
"It's still concrete, but the beauty is that you can leave the wood floor underneath and it has more give to it," Chorneyko said.
Dynamic designs
Almost any design can be transferred to the concrete.
"There are hundreds of different colours of epoxies and they are more forgiving to use if there are imperfections in the concrete," Chorneyko said.
Colours of acid-stained concrete tend to be more earthy and organic in appearance.
"I think people like the natural look of acid-stained concrete. They like the way it enhances the beauty of the concrete," Chorneyko said.
Chorneyko recently transformed a young St. Albert boy's bedroom into a hockey arena.
"We painted the concrete blue. Then we masked the design and put a metallic epoxy on top to look like ice. We used a print-shop vinyl decal for the Oilers' logo and put it on top of the epoxy like a sign. Then we clear-coated it with epoxy," he said.
The flooring is so hard the boy and his pals play their own hockey game in his bedroom with mini-sticks.
"It's very durable but yet it feels almost rubbery and soft. It looks like ice but yet I can walk on it in my high heels and it doesn't make a dent," Kim Bordan said of her son's bedroom floor.
As with any flooring design, the overall finished look must be carefully considered, as you are likely to live with the design for a long time.
"Concrete won't begin to disintegrate for 100 years," Jarem said, adding, " I can remove the finish by sanding it or grinding it off."
Jarem asks his customers to consider how the floor design will change the appearance of the room dimensions.
"Acid staining is more expensive. But if you have a solid colour, maybe a nice acid stain that looks like a slab of marble, then the room will look bigger. If you put in lines for tiles, it can make the room appear busier or smaller," he said.
New metallic epoxies add a different look to a room's design. As the name suggests, the finish looks metallic, but a shiny finish is optional and it is available in almost any colour, including gold.
"First you put down the prime coat then the metallic epoxy. Next you drip a different chemical on the floor that reacts and spreads out to make the design. You can add glitter to it if you wish. If you wanted the floor to look as if you were walking on gold, we'd use a gold epoxy and then broadcast gold-coloured flakes on it," Jarem said.
The cost of concrete flooring varies greatly depending upon the square footage required and the application used. Generally speaking, the larger the job, the less expensive per square foot for decorative flooring.
