Concrete Nightmare?

Our new house has a cute little sunroom, but it was obvious they had pulled up the old flooring and left the concrete pad. A power washing did not remove the stains and discoloration, so I definitely needed to do something. I looked up options, and thought microconcrete could be a good option. Here is my review of the process and honest thoughts on the outcome.

• microconcrete
• bucket
• rubber trowl
• paint mixer

The microconcrete we used is called Surecrete, available on Amazon. This was the only one I was able to easily find online. From what I could tell, this is a relatively new product, and can be used on floors, walls, and throughout the home. Specialty finishes are available if the concrete will be in a moist environment. The manufacturers recommend having someone familiar with the product lay down the concrete, but we did not do that. Here are the results.

As you can see, those little black dots are holes formed after I laid down the concrete. I bought the kind of trowel recommended online, but not sure why this happened to me. We used a paint mixer attached to our drill, but I still found lumps in the mix. My husband insisted he put the correct amount of water, but I definitely imagined this product to be a little thinner. Not sure how that could have been avoided either. He mixed a little more water into it at the end and I enjoyed working with it more. The package also said it would cover 500 feet, but we had to buy another bag. Another reason I think we perhaps didn’t put enough water. The bag had two QR codes for instructions on the mixing, not sure why it couldn’t just be printed on the package.

Since we had holes and unevenness, we had to sand down the entire room. I believe I read somewhere that sanding is recommended anyway between layers but I could be wrong. Below is a picture after we had sanded some areas versus those we hadn’t. Left lower quadrant has been sanded, the upper right quadrant has obvious lumps.

Overall, I am pleased with the cost+effort=result. This was about a 3 day project. The ridges still present will be mostly covered by rugs and/or furniture. There were definitely parts that looked really smooth but if I was putting this somewhere eye-level I would probably go with a professional. I’ve seen people using this in their bathrooms mostly, so again I’d probably get someone who knows what they are doing. If I was doing this again I might look at doing a concrete stain or something instead, but I did want something light. I definitely like the look of the flooring in the sunlight.

Overall, I would recommend this product if people will not be looking at it closely. It was not as easy to work with as I read online, but compared to learning how to put down tile or some other flooring I would say it’s easier. And as always when it comes to home improvement…buy one more than you think you’ll need.