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I don’t have the money to pay someone else to do it so this is a DIY project
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My house is approximately 2,000 square feet and almost all of it is exposed stained concrete floor. To help visualize the task, I added a floor plan of my house and shaded all the exposed concrete in orange
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I don’t like manual labor anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I never loved it but now a days, my ability to bend over and “put my back into it” are gone. I’m sure it’s because I’m getting old smarter because I would just as much prefer to hire someone else to do this type of work.
See what I mean? That is a lot of orange. Since I don’t own a concrete grinding machine, nor do I know how to operate one – that’s out. They make grinders now that can do a job like mine but like I said, I don’t have a few thousand dollars to spare. So I made some calls and asked about acid washing the floors with muriatic acid. I know that we specify this type of acid when refinishing concrete sidewalks and patios so why wouldn’t it work for me? I spoke with a contractor and a landscape architect and after they both stopped laughing and making jokes about melting my fingers down a joint or two, they both gave me a melted thumbs up! Nothing left to do but to get to it!
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I started off by picking a test spot in the utility room, basically underneath the washing machine. I did this because if I majorly screwed something up, the washing machine would hide the evidence from the next sucker person who would buy this house. This was also a good spot because the floor here looked terrible…If I wanted to see how this was going to work, this was definitely the spot. I did some spot cleaning to get everything ready with my wet/dry shop vac (an awesome tool, highly recommend picking one up if you don’t already have one).
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Will you just look at that spot!? Erghh – I never seen a bit of concrete that needed to have acid poured on it more deserving than this bit right here. I also used a metal wire brush to make sure that the concrete score lines were nice and clean…mostly. C’mon, throw me a frickin’ bone here, there was like 50 years of shamasazam in there.
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Okay, I got all the surfaces ready to go and I prepared my mixture of muriatic acid (5% aka 20:1) mixture with water. Oh yeah, unless you really do want melty fingers, get a pair or rubber gloves – the kind made for protection from industrial strength chemicals, not the ones that will work against dish-pan hands. In my case, and I would guess yours as well, when I bought my muriatic acid from Lowe’s, they just happen to conveniently place a box of the right kind of gloves right next to the acid. Way to go Lowe’s! *Air Punch*
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So I poured the 5% solution on the concrete and waited for the magic to happen. Right away there was a chemical reaction and the concrete started to hiss and steam just a little bit. Oh yeah…(rubbing gloved hands together)…like taking candy from the kitchen drawer…so easy. At this rate, I would bang this project out in 2 days max (what?!?…I mean, awesome!)
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What??! That looks terrible! It’s going to take a years to get this project done with this plan…. I have a good mind to take my gloves off, let one or two fingers get a little melty and wag them in the faces of that contractor and landscape architect as I tell them what idiots they are! Now what am I going to do??
(get a beer)
(go back and look at floor…….stupid floor)
My wife tells me to just pour more acid on it – well, not really more, just a higher concentration – full strength (melty fingers be damned!!) No thanks, my back hurts after doing that one….stupid….tiny….little…spot.
(get a beer)
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To give you an idea, I change the spot I acid washed to yellow so you can see, you know, how much further I have to go. Beer is never the solution, it’s just a diversionary tactic and eventually, a real plan is going to have to be put in place. But what? What is it that I need to do?
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Thaaat’s right……roller skating. You can always count on roller skating.
(and the banana stand, there’s always money in the banana stand)