Ellisville polished concrete, with no coating to peel
Polishing is not a coating, and that is the whole point of it. There is no film on top of the slab, so there is nothing to peel, blister or delaminate. What you walk on is the concrete itself, cut back with progressively finer diamonds and densified until it takes a sheen. The slab is the floor.
Polishing is the one floor where we have to turn jobs down, and the slab is what decides it.
Polishing is machine work and machine time, which is why we would rather come and read your slab in person than quote it off a description.
Where polishing fits around Ellisville
The work that suits it best around here sits at two ends. There is the commercial end, shops and back-of-house rooms and anywhere a floor gets walked on all day and nobody wants to shut down for a resin cure. Then there are the newer builds out toward the college, where the slab was placed well and finished flat and there is something worth exposing underneath. Both of those start from a slab somebody got right.
The older in-town slabs are the harder conversation. Decades of patching, a plumbing repair cut through the middle, a section replaced in a different mix, an acrylic sealer worked into the pores. Polishing does not cover any of that. It brings it up to a shine. A patched slab polishes into a very clean, very glossy record of every patch it has ever had.
The humidity that governs every resin day we work in this part of the state matters far less here. There is no base coat flowing out, no cure window to protect, so an August afternoon is not the problem it would be on a coated floor. The constraint on a polish is dust control and the hours the building can give us.
The concrete polishing page covers the work itself. For this one, send over the details or call 601-319-9619.
How a polish actually gets cut
A test pass decides everything
Before anybody commits to a polish we cut a small area in a corner and look at what comes up. That tells us how deep the hard troweled layer runs, how much aggregate is sitting near the surface and whether the color is even across the pour. It is a short answer to a question nobody can answer from a photograph.
The cut decides how much stone shows
How far down we go is a choice, and it is the one that changes the look most. Stop high and you get a cream finish with almost no aggregate in it. Go deeper and the sand comes through, then the stone. Each step is a different floor, and you pick it off the test patch rather than off a word.
There is no film to fail, because the wear surface is the slab you already own.
Densifier, then finer and finer
Partway through the sequence the slab gets densified, which hardens the surface chemically so the finer diamonds have something to burnish instead of just scratching. After that the grits step up in order. Skipping a grit is how a floor ends up looking hazy and streaky at the end, and no amount of polishing fixes a step you missed.
Joints, cracks and what stays visible
Cracks and joints get filled with a hard filler and ground flush, which makes them disappear as a trip hazard but not as a line. You will still see where they are. On a polish that is the deal: everything in the slab stays in the slab, and we show you the test patch so you know what you are buying.
Why we talk people out of polishing
More of these calls end in a different recommendation than any other floor we quote.
A slab full of repairs
A floor that has been cut for plumbing, patched at a doorway and partly replaced in a different mix will polish beautifully and still read as three floors. Nothing about a polish covers that up, which is exactly the problem when the slab underneath has had a hard life. A flake system hides it. A polish puts a light on it.
Stains that go all the way down
Oil that has been soaking into a shop floor for years is not on the surface. It is in the slab, sometimes deeper than we can take the cut without exposing more stone than you wanted. Grinding will lighten it and will not remove it, and anybody promising otherwise has not ground many shop floors.
Sold a polish, given a coat
Some floors sold as polished concrete are a ground slab with a glossy sealer rolled over the top. That is a different product with a different life, and it does eventually wear through and need doing again. If what you are being quoted turns on a topcoat, it is not a polish, and the two should not be compared as if they were the same floor.
Grits skipped to save a day
A polish rushed by jumping grits looks cloudy under raking light, and the scratches from the coarse pass never fully come out. It shows up worst where a window throws light across the floor in the afternoon. That is not a maintenance issue and there is no fixing it with a mop. It has to be cut again.
Polish or flake, and how to decide
The way to choose is to work out what you want the floor to do about the slab you have. Flake covers. It is opaque, it hides a patched pour completely, and the color is a decision you get to make. A polish reveals. It is the slab, so the slab’s history is the finish, and the only real color choice is how deep we cut.
After that the trade runs the other way. A polished floor has no film to fail, so there is nothing to peel at a doorway or lift under a hot tire, and it will not need recoating down the line. A flake floor gives you a built topcoat that takes the abuse instead of the concrete, and a texture you can specify. Neither one is the better floor in the abstract. One of them is the better floor for your slab.
The cut depth is the one decision on this floor you cannot walk back. We can always go deeper into the slab. We cannot put the cream back once the sand and stone are showing, so the choice gets made off the test patch, in the room, with you standing there looking at it rather than off a description over the phone. Take the afternoon over it if you want. The patch is not going anywhere.
Where Ellisville sits for us
Polishing takes more machine time on site than a coating does, so the short run from Laurel is the difference between a straightforward job and an awkward one.
The rest of what we coat in Ellisville
Choosing somebody to do our Floors was a hard decision but I am so happy we picked ICM coating masters. The results are beautiful and The time and effort put into the work was amazing.Verified review
Questions we get asked
Is polished concrete a coating?
No. It is the slab itself, cut back with progressively finer diamonds and hardened with a densifier. Nothing is laid on top, so there is no film that can peel, blister or delaminate. That is the main reason people choose it over a resin floor on a slab that suits it.
Will polishing hide the stains and patches?
No, and that is the thing to understand before deciding. Polishing exposes the slab rather than covering it, so patches, old repairs and deep staining stay visible and often read more clearly once the floor has a sheen. If you want them gone, a flake system is the answer.
How do I know if my slab is a candidate?
We cut a test patch in an out of the way corner and look at what comes up. That shows the trowel depth, how near the surface the aggregate sits and how even the color is. Nobody can tell you from a photograph, and we would not try.
Can you polish an older in-town slab?
Sometimes. Older slabs around Ellisville have usually been cut, patched and sealed at least once, and all of that will still be visible afterwards. If the test patch comes up as a record of every repair the floor has had, we will tell you and suggest covering instead.
Is it slippery?
Polished concrete is smooth, and a smooth floor is slick when it is wet. Indoors and dry it is fine. Where a floor gets wet daily we would specify something with texture built into it instead, because grip comes from profile and a polish does not have much.
What does it need afterwards?
A dust mop and a neutral cleaner, same as a coated floor. No wax and no resealing. Grit left on a polished slab is what dulls it, because it gets walked around underfoot, so the mopping is doing more than it looks like it is doing.
Let us cut a test patch first
Call Kevin and tell him what the slab is and what the room does. We will cut a patch in a corner, show you what comes up, and say plainly whether a polish is the right floor for it.
Have a look at the gallery, then get the details over to us.