High gloss Geoshine™. Random exposure, basalt with standard grey base.
A high gloss Geoshine™ floor was the perfect choice for a busy family of five in Melbourne’s Northcote.
NORTHCOTE FAMILY GET THEIR DREAM FLOOR
A change of heart helped a Northcote family attain their dream Geoshine™ polished concrete floor.
The new home-owners had originally chosen a matt sheen level for their floor, but with a busy lifestyle and three lively sons they found it difficult to keep clean. They contacted Geocrete chief artisan Paul Warner, who re-crafted the floor to a beautiful high gloss sheen, thus giving the floor its vibrant shine and lustre. All importantly, it’s now a breeze to maintain!
The floor is a standout feature of the architecturally designed new home, which is quietly tucked away off Northcote’s busy station street, famous for its traditional Italian and Greek cafés, antipasto supermarkets and pastry stores bursting with mouth-watering homemade pasta and ciabatta bread.
From the street, the two story post-modern home presents an arresting and eclectic mix of building materials, shapes and textures. On entering the house, an impressive feature wall highlighting the geometric shapes of plywood sets the tone for a dream home. Complementing the natural tones of the plywood is the stunning high-gloss polished concrete floor, which swathes the entire ground level. In the prodigious living area, a soaring split level ceiling features another dramatic take on geometrically patterned plywood, while clerestory windows allow ambient light to flood the living space, accentuating the beauty of the floor.
The floor is a sensational example of a random exposure of aggregate – a very fine grind that removes only 1-2mm from the concrete surface. The effect gives a striking ‘salt and pepper’ appearance to the floor, on which the stones appear to have been casually scattered to form eye-catching clusters of aggregate.
The couple chose a standard grey base for the floor’s concrete mix; a neutral, earthy tone that allows the basalt and quartzite aggregate to shine. The basalt has a lovely mixture of blacks, dark greys and browns, which is juxtaposed with a sparkling mix of 5% quartzite, a ratio Paul says helps to prevent a floor from looking too “busy”.
Paul explains that random exposure is the hardest of all finishes to achieve because its success depends on the workmanship of the concreter. “Only a small proportion of slabs are concreted to the appropriate standard. Random exposure can often look terribly defective, like zebra stripes that show the concreter’s poorly placed screed marks.”
Unfortunately, starting out with a lousy concrete job amounts to a more expensive polishing job, so it’s important that clients employ a reputable concreter. “Happily in this case, the floor was both a breeze and an absolute pleasure to create, thanks to the great work done by Adrian from AC Concrete Constructions.”
Paul says he recommends a high gloss sheen to all his clients.
“With its beautiful, bright, sparkling surface shine, it’s the ultimate in polished concrete, and what designer home dreams are made of. Of all the sheens, high gloss requires the largest amount of surface densifiers, so it’s not only the most durable option, but also the easiest to clean and maintain. The result is a low-maintenance floor of unsurpassed strength, durability and beauty.” The stuff of dreams indeed!
