All work had to be completed after store hours and before 6:30 am, in one night, before the store manager arrived. The furniture and equipment were moved to each side as one half of the floor was ground, densified, and polished. The applicator, Barson Protech, chose the RetroPlate System because the owner had unsuccessfully re-applied topcoats to the existing dry shake color hardener floor. Because of the heavy foot traffic, the owner was hoping for a diamond polishing system to enhance the performance of the colored concrete and eliminate the need for re-applying topcoats, reducing costly maintenance. The RetroPlate System uses a permanent densifier to seal and harden the concrete. The added benefit of stabilizing the concrete and enhancing the sheen appealed to the owner.

The existing floor’s joints were in good shape and there were a couple of minor hairline cracks. There was no need to use a joint filler or crack repair. The next process was deciding what diamonds to use. The polishing contractor, Barson Protech, started with 50-grit bonded metal diamonds. The acrylic topcoats were peeling and removed easily with the first pass of the Eagle grinding machine. Because of the fast-track schedule, there was no time to work with chemical stripping and removal. A solvent-based stripper would have been out of the question, according to Chance Beck of Barson Protech. There would not have been enough time to set up adequate ventilation for a solvent-based stripper and the time involved for disposal and removal. The combination of choosing the correct diamond in conjunction with the heavy-duty grinder equipped with a HEPA filter removed the delaminating topcoats with great speed and left plenty of time to bring this floor up to a 1500-grit polish. RetroPlate's RetroGaurd was applied as the final step as a stain guard.

The results are in and the floor polished up beautifully with the RetroPlate System. Since then, more existing projects have been polished.