In the concrete polishing business, the cheapest quote will usually buy you the worst job. I get probably 10 jobs a year where I am called in to fix the work done by the lowest bidder.
The latest was in a Melbourne business that had just finished a large office extension. The architect had specified Geocrete to polish the floors, but the client decided to select a lower quote.
The result? An uneven, lifeless floor that looked little better than raw concrete when it should have been beautiful – black oxide concrete with 80% basalt and 20% white quartz.
Working long hours over a Friday night to Sunday evening (the client did not want to lose any trading time), I redid this 80 square metre floor from start to finish.
I ground off the top five millimetres to get it back to a base floor, then applied my GeoshineTM polishing system to produce a high-gloss finish.
This included 15 grinding and polishing steps, starting at 30-grit diamond heads and going up to 3000-grit, with 10 applications of premium potassium, lithium and colloidal silicate densifiers, which made the concrete incredibly hard.
I also spent a lot of time on my knees doing hand grinding around all the skirtings and joinery – I know every stone in this floor after 15 rounds of up-close grinding and polishing!
A final double application of penetrating sealer and a final soft buff and this floor officially became a work of art. Check out the before and after photos below.
The cost to fix the original poor work? Twice what they would have paid had Geocrete done it in the first place!
