Returning to the Media room. After getting the painting (mostly) completed - still some touchup things to attend to - the focus turned to the floor. The vision was to continue the inclusion of "industrial style" elements into this space, by retaining the concrete floor but staining it a deep brownish black and hopefully achieving a worn, patina'd look. I started with an acid called "Rusted Fence" and learned the application techniques by watching YouTube videos. Like all things on the 'Tube, is seems so easy.
So the room was prepped, taped, plastic'd all around, vacuumed, mopped, and the acid stain applied. I chose the acid stain because I wanted that random, marbleized look that occurs when a pigmented acid reacts with the lime in the concrete. I'll fast forward to the end: It looks great. There were a few days of panic, however.
YouTube will coach you to not pay attention to the color of the acid stain as it initially goes down. The color will randomly develop as the acid reacts with the lime in the concrete.
So the room was prepped, taped, plastic'd all around, vacuumed, mopped, and the acid stain applied. I chose the acid stain because I wanted that random, marbleized look that occurs when a pigmented acid reacts with the lime in the concrete. I'll fast forward to the end: It looks great. There were a few days of panic, however.
YouTube will coach you to not pay attention to the color of the acid stain as it initially goes down. The color will randomly develop as the acid reacts with the lime in the concrete.
In my case, the color went down, and it started to react - looked OK, it will darken as the product brochure shows, I kept telling myself... but that random reaction thing was feeling like it was going bad. by the end of the night the brownish areas had turned a nuclear yellow shade. I was already contemplating calling the carpet installation team before 24 hours were up. The pic below is still slightly wet - it actually got worse as it dried.
A call to the tech support line the next Monday was reassuring. Just follow the remaining steps: Neutralizing, and then mopping / rinsing until the water runs clear. OK.
So the next few days were all about back-ache inducing rinsing and mopping. I think I mopped the entire thing 5 times. That's a lot of brown water.
In the end, I got the look I was after. There is still a next step of applying the sealer, which will give it a "wet look" and deepen the color even further. Onward. There is a power room vanity to install today.
Looking more like what I was after ... following the first coating of concrete sealer:
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