Polishing concrete can be a beautiful way to save money on your concrete designs. While the costs involved in supplies is minimal, the time necessary to produce a beautifully finished product is often pricey in itself. To save money, consider doing it yourself. Here is a short description of how to polish concrete yourself to create a beautifully finished piece of concrete.

The first step is to don all your safety wear–eye protection, a mask, ear protection, and gloves. In addition, you might want to wear a leather apron or other protective apron. Next, prepare your diamond concrete polisher. The first pass you make over the concrete should be using a 32-grit, coarse diamond pad. After your polisher is ready to go, prepare the concrete by scrubbing with a pH-neutral cleanser and a power sprayer to clean off all the debris, dirt, and gunk that may be on the surface. Let the concrete dry for at least two hours before proceeding with your polishing job.

As you begin to polish the concrete slab, move the diamond polisher in small circles. This first pass is supposed to help you level out the concrete. Once you have gone over the surface once with your 32-grit pad, change the pad to a pad of 60-grit and make another pass over the concrete. This gauge of grit will help to remove blemishes and imperfections. For the third pass, change your pad to a 120-grit pad to remove fine scratches and start producing a glossy finish. Of course, after each pass, be sure to wipe off all the dust before continuing.

The last pass you will need to do should use a 50-grit diamond pad that is resin based. This polishing pass will help to open the pores in the concrete and help prepare it for its finish. After going over the entire slab with this resin-based pad, do not remove the dust. Instead, leave it in place and continue on with the process.

The next step is to spray the polished concrete with a thin layer of acrylic tile adhesive spray. You should get the dust on the surface of the concrete barely wet. Now you will again polish the surface of the concrete, grinding the dust and the adhesive into the pores of the surface.

Spray the concrete with a concrete hardener. Let dry for an hour before continuing. The final group of steps in the polishing process is to apply the shiny surface polishing. use a 1500-grit pad to polish once. Then switch to a 3000-grit pad to finish off the actual grinding. Spread the polishing compound over the entire surface and run the polisher over again to give the surface a high-gloss finish.

To protect your newly polished surface from the wear and tear of everyday life, you will probably want to spray your finished product with an epoxy coating. Allow it to cure for forty-eight hours before using the surface. With these easy steps, you will be able to polish your own concrete slabs to create beautiful surfaces anywhere you wish.

The short answer is that it’s the best way to turn a floor that looks like it was poured for a garage into a floor that looks like it was designed for a palace. Imagine turning a plain concrete surface into a floor that gleams like marble!

You have probably seen polished concrete floors in commercial settings such as restaurants, shopping malls or car dealerships. All the reasons that businesses choose polished concrete are reasons to consider having such floors for yourself. They are durable, extremely low maintenance, economical, won’t harbor allergens, and above all, they’re remarkably attractive!

Concrete polishing is a bit like sanding wood. A heavy-duty polishing machine is used, except instead of sandpaper, disks of grit grind down the concrete surface. Successively finer sizes of grit in diamond grinding disks are used until the floor shines like polished stone. The polishing machines have built-in vacuums that collect the most of the dust that is produced.

Concrete is made of cement, water, and aggregates such as sand and small stones. Polishing your concrete flooring will expose the aggregates and give the floor a unique character. Except for highly porous or damaged concrete, nearly any existing concrete floor can be polished. If a concrete floor is newly poured with the intention of polishing it, special aggregates such as glass, seashells, nuts, bolts or even computer chips can be seeded into the upper surface. When this is polished, flecks glass, shell or metal are exposed. Concrete polishing is often done in conjunction with staining, so a wide palate of coloring is also available.

Polishing will improve the quality of the concrete because before the final polishing is done, a penetrating chemical hardener is applied. This chemically alters the concrete and leaves a surface that is so dense that no pricey sealers or waxes are needed. You can literally drive a forklift over it! In fact, many warehouse owners choose to have their stockroom floors polished just for that purpose.

One surprising fact about polished concrete is that despite a mirror finish, it is still more slip resistant than standard tile floors. Another advantage is that, unlike concrete sealed with epoxy, polished concrete can breathe. This reduces the potential for problems with efflorescence.

It still may crack over time, but there are simple solutions for fixing problems like that.

For a man—or woman—who believes that his home is his castle, concrete polishing transforms the most dungeon-like floors into the look of polished stone.