Cary and Randy Johnston recently bought a 1959 rancher in north Dallas. They both agreed that polished concrete would be perfect for this home. Randy had been in the concrete business many years and knew that back in 1959 there was a certain rock quarry that had warm and beautiful aggregate. The contractor would have to figure out how much grinding would be necessary to get the heavy exposed look they wanted and how good would the rock actually look when polished.
Cary Johnston contacted Garagewerx of Texas to offer an estimate and they were given the opportunity to do a test grind in one of the rooms. Once that test was complete, the Johnstons agreed to work with Garagewerx on the project.
In the contractor's initial tests, the surface of the concrete scratched at a Mohs 7 hardness level. The front door and interior doors of the home range in width from 30 to 32 inches, so they used two HTC 500 grinders for work in the smaller rooms. They started with H3 tooling, which worked well but only for a short time. After they removed the top 1/8 inch of concrete, they tested the hardness of concrete again and it scratched at a Mohs 1. They swapped out tooling for S2 and proceeded to grind to the desired exposure.
To speed the process, the contractor reached out to a local HTC rep for a faster process and they recommended the HTC Ravager heads. Once these tools were used, they saw considerable improvement to their stock removal. After each room was ground down with three to four passes using the Ravager heads, they ground the floors again with the S2 tooling and then went incrementally up to 1500. In the larger rooms, they were fortunate to use the new HTC RX8 Grinder and Ravager heads.
At 40 grit, the contractor chased and filled all the cracks using VersaFlex Quick Mender XO semi-rigid polyurea with ground dust to match the floor color. Once they ground to 80 grit, they troweled out VersaFlex Quick Mender XO with gold pigment over the entire floor to fill in pinholes and missing aggregate. After 200 grit tooling, they applied three coats of Consolideck LS densifier and finished at 1,500 with two burnished coats of Consolideck Polish Guard.
By the completion of the project, Garagewerx removed about a foot of concrete from the entire floor and had more than 100 bags of concrete dust. The Johnstons were very pleased with the outcome and love the warm natural concrete color and aggregate exposure. Once the floors were done, additional remodeling continued to finish off the bathrooms, kitchen, laundry, and all new floor to ceiling windows.
