How to Overlay Stamp Concrete

Video Transcript

"OK I'm going to be prepping this concrete, this front porch for a concrete overlay and so I'm going to blow it off, do an acid wash on it. That cleans out the pores, cleans the concrete up but it also makes the alkalinity of the concrete real nice for a concrete overlay, it makes the alkalinity right. Then you neutralize that acid and then do a nice pressure wash on it. Pressure wash gets that acid and the soupy stuff out of the pores and gets it cleaned up for a nice bite for your overlay. I'm going to be spraying on my acid out of just a regular garden sprayer. You want to mix your acid with some water, it just depends on what type of profiling you're trying to get and but you can do a 50/50 water and acid mix is usually pretty decent. OK now that the acid is on there and done it's work, I'm going to neutralize it. You always want to neutralize your acid. I use ammonia to neutralize it, you just want to get a good full coverage coat so that the alkalinity of the concrete gets to where it needs to be. So just using a garden sprayer once again to get my ammonia on there. OK now we finish up the pressure washing and got those pores of that concrete nice and cleaned out and now we're going to let it dry up a little bit and put down our overlay, mix up our concrete and put down a thin coat of concrete, we're going to make it look like Italian slate with our trowel, do a light sand on it, stain it, seal it up and we're done. OK we're going to be doing a concrete overlay. I'm going to do a simulated stamp. It's done by the trowel and it looks like an Italian slate stamp. You get the texture from your trowel. So after properly preparing the concrete which I have done, I acid stained it, neutralized it and then pressure washed it to clean out the pores. Now you don't ever want to fill the expansion joints with concrete even though this is flexible and stronger than regular concrete because of the movement it will end up cracking and delaminating there at the expansion joint. So I tape off my expansion joints so that I can just pull the excess off out of there and then we tie in the expansion joints when you go to stain it, you'll stain the expansion joints as well so it ties the whole overlay in together real nice. OK now that it's prepped and taped I mixed up my concrete, it's a polymer modified concrete meant for going over regular concrete on the thin level. It goes out about three-sixteenths of an inch, a quarter if you're going to stamp the top of it. I'll be getting the texture out of my trowel. So once you mix it up then add your polymers to it, you just simply pour it out and trowel it out. OK with my square trowel is where I do all my edging so I'm careful to not get it on the house and then I use it to get a nice even spread. Once I got my spread then I use this trowel for my texture and there's you can go rougher textures or smoother textures. You just got to be careful when the temperature is real hot because it will want to set up on you real quick. But with this trowel you can get a smoother texture or a rougher texture, depends if I'm going for a flagstone look or slate or what it is you're going for. OK you just spread out the concrete evenly. So I use my square trowel. If I'm doing corners or if I'm just wanting to get a spread out of it. Spread it out nice and even. Once it's even, then you can take your circular trowel here and you can get whatever kind of texture you want. You can get a lighter texture, you can really rough it make it look like flagstone or some rougher slate, it's just a personal thing and it's just with a little practice with the trowel as what kind of finish you're going to put on it. Now with my trowel is how I'm getting my texture so with a little practice you just kind of mess with the side of it or rough it up however you want but you make it rougher or smoother from the trowel. I'm always going for a rock look so you can give a nice little texture to it with my trowel pick some of it up. OK now I've pulled up the tape on the expansion joints before it got, the concrete got too hard to pull it up and now I'm just going to do a cleanup on my scraps, on my tape and then I'm going to do a light sand over it to knock down any highs and it also makes it look more slatey after I give it a nice sand."