LESLIE: Wilson in Montana needs some help with a basement floor. What can we do for you?
WILSON: I have a concrete floor that’s got a crack in it that runs across the whole house. It’s not – the gap is not great; it’s not more than probably an eighth of an inch but …
TOM: OK.
WILSON: … it’s a pretty significant crack, so I wanted to have a – get a product that would fill that and also wondered about some kind of surface coating or decorative coating for the cement that would – that I could make to simulate rock or tile; preferably something I could do myself.
TOM: Well, first of all, the crack is not unusual – that’s very typical – and you’re probably going to seal that with a caulk but in terms of what to put over it, I would look at the epoxy floor-coating systems. QUIKRETE has a new one out now that comes in 60 different colors and 4 different types of color flakes, so you can have something that looks like your plain, old gray floor or it could look like a brick color, brown, blue – whatever color you want.
LESLIE: Mm-hmm.
TOM: It’s pretty attractive and it’s easy to clean when it’s done.
LESLIE: Yeah. And you know what’s interesting? If you wanted to take the time and effort to sort of tape off different areas and almost make it look like it has seams, the way the flake looks – depending on the color that you choose of the floor finish – you can make it almost look like travertine, which is that marble with that specking in it. Or QUIKRETE just released – we saw this at The Builders Show in January – there was a very interesting QUIKRETE product that sort of does acid staining and it came in like a reddish, a gold tone and in like an olivey-green and when done on the interior and polished in the way that they have the interior finish, it looks beautiful. And depending on the age of the concrete, the sort of acid-etching material that’s within the product causes it to get these different depths and tones of the color. So, in almost – if your concrete is older, it looks better. And that’s a new product; it’s an acid-staining home kit that they have.
WILSON: Do they have directions for how you apply and color and so forth these things?
LESLIE: Absolutely. And they’re very easy to follow and this new acid-staining kit is just a two-step process and the epoxy kit is also the same.
WILSON: OK. And can you put a design in those things like, you know, make it look like stone or tile and that sort of thing?
LESLIE: With the acid-staining, you absolutely can and you can do the same with the epoxy kit as long as you take time to sort of tape things out and work in a methodical method, if you will, to sort of create these areas without trapping yourself in a corner and letting things dry.
WILSON: Uh-huh. OK. And would I just find these at just any home improvement store?
LESLIE: Mm-hmm. I would start with the QUIKRETE website, just because the acid-staining kit is a new product for them, so I’m not sure what the distribution is.
WILSON: OK. And is that just QUIKRETE.com, you think?
TOM: Yeah. It’s Q-U-I-K-R-E-T-E.com.
WILSON: Alrighty. Thanks very much.
TOM: You’re welcome, Wilson. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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