The Challenge

Create a glamourous high-gloss polished concrete floor for the jewelry retailer, Alex and Ani. Overcome the issue of installing the floor over a soft gypsum-based underlayment at a minimum of expense in time and money.

The Outcome

A beautiful high-shine floor is created that fits in the store’s brand colors and really sets off the merchandise. The new floor withstands heavy foot traffic, is easy to maintain and veer low maintenance.

Overview

Madstone Concrete was supposed to polish an existing concrete floor in the flagship retail jewelry store, Alex & Ani. When the installers started grinding the concrete surface in preparation for polishing, the machine started grinding very deep into the surface. Tom Zilian of Madstone realized the substrate was not concrete but was in fact a gypsum-based underlayment. The gypsum was of very good quality, looked like concrete, but was much softer than concrete. On a gypsum-based substrate, the only option for installing a polished concrete floor is to use Skraffino—a cement-based microtopping.

Installation

Madstone installed 3 coats of Duraamen’s Skraffino microtopping. The first coat was regular grain Skraffino, followed by fine grain, and lastly, super fine grain. This builds a tough, durable surface that is smooth and ready to accept epoxy coatings and the desired sheen of topcoat. The Skraffino was colored with our Colorfast integral coloring powders.

The floor was then sealed and glazed with Perdure E32 and Perdure E12. Our Perdure products are epoxy, polyurethane, and polyaspartic lines of coatings, primers, and sealers engineered for professional-grade concrete flooring projects. There is a wide range of Perdure products to choose from so that no matter what the job requirements are we have a product that will fill the need.

In this case, Perdure E32, a water-based epoxy sealer/primer, was used to ready the surface for the application of Perdure E12. E12 is an epoxy glaze that provides a durable high-shine surface.

Lastly, all of the previous work was sealed with Perdure U50. U50 is a chemically resistant polyurethane topcoat. It provides years of protection from harsh chemical cleaners and heavy foot traffic.

View the Installing Concrete Microtoppings
Over Gypsum video Series

Cost:

$4.50 – $5.00 sq. ft.
Includes all products needed to complete the project.

To have a professional install polished concrete flooring with a concrete microtopping cost is approximately $12.00sq.ft. Installer costs may vary by geographic location due to varying labor costs.

The cost is comparable to other types of flooring including:

• Hardwood
• Ceramic or Porcelain Tile
• Commercial Carpet
• Marble

The Success:

The Alex and Ani store in Providence, RI now has an incredible-looking, low-maintenance polished concrete floor in spite of the fact their gypsum subfloor was not able to be polished.