How to Stamp Concrete Designs

Video Transcript

"I'm going to tell you how to stamp concrete. You can stamp any concrete, whether it be indoors, driveways, front porches, swimming pool decks. So if you were interested in doing something with your concrete, I'll show up with some sample boards to get an idea of what you want to do, 'cause there's many things we do, from hand trowelable overlays, tiles, stamps, acrylic-placed knockdown, metallics epoxy, epoxy rock. There's all different kinds of things that can be done, and it's just going to depend on the color, design and the amount of money you want to spend. But, you could just give us a call and we'll get a measurement, see what you're leaning towards and we get you a price on that. But you just always want to properly prepare the concrete, whether it be, you know, grinding it with a diamond blade, acids, washing it and neutralizing it, or shot blasting it. But you want to profile that concrete, clean it up, pressure wash it out. Just clean that concrete and make sure that it's ready to take some concrete to adhere to it. And once it's prepared, then you're gonna...on most stamps you're going to lay out a polymer-modified stampable concrete and you're going to gage rake it out a quarter of an inch. Now, as far as the stamps go, you can buy stamps, rent stamps from a lot of concrete rental places, you know, however you're going to get your stamp. Usually they come on this thick plastic, and there's a design. Like a lot of designs are actually molded out of real slate, or Ashler slate. There's just many varieties of stamps you can do. Flagstones, stones, you name it, fan brick, all of it. So, it's all the same idea. You want a quarter inch, unless it states otherwise, and then you just do...simply put some liquid release. It's called "bubblegum" liquid release so that the stamp doesn't stick to the concrete, and then you'll...so you'll do a nice coverage of the release on it. Put your stamp over the concrete, and then stamp that impression in. Now, there's another way of making it a little easier or more cost effective to stamp. And you can use a trowel. So instead of actually stamping it with an Italian slate stamp, which is going to use more material, be more costly, you can get the texture of a slate from your trowel. And that's going to take a little practice, a little trial and error. But what you can do is get your texture, and then I always do a light sand on it, and it makes it look like slate, or rock. And then you'll stain everything with a stain that you buy or you can make your own stain out of oxides and alcohol water and polymer, is what I use. And then I seal everything that I do with a concrete sealer, an epoxy, a urethane, it just depends on where you're going to be stamping at. With this stamp, it actually is a flagstone or rock design. There's many different kinds you can do. And what that does is, not only gives you the look of a flagstone and the texture, but it puts your grout lines in for you. And so you can get the rock look or a flagstone or a riverbed rock look. All different kinds of things with these stamps, many possibilities. And it's real important on your stain. If you're staining it properly and pick the right color, you can actually make it very realistic looking."