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How an old concrete floor gets a durable, economical, decorative finish.
Hudy's Café has been a popular breakfast and lunch spot in Champlin, Minnesota, for more than 14 years — so popular that customers often lined up out the door on weekends. Owners Melissa and Jerry Hudy wanted to expand the café but knew they'd need a way to generate additional business Monday through Friday. Thus, the Lil Bar was born.
The Hudys took over and transformed an adjacent space into a bar and grill, serving lunch, dinner and drinks all week. Although the café and bar are separate entities, they share kitchen facilities.
H&C Products in the Lil Bar
Here's a quick review of the products used to create a great-looking concrete floor that stands up to restaurant and bar traffic. Learn more about all the hard-working stains and sealers from H&C.
H&C® Semi-Transparent Decorative Concrete Stain creates the look of acid stains with less time and labor. Choose from 16 on-trend colors to mix and match. You can apply numerous coats with no waiting in between.
H&C® Decorative Concrete Sealer Solvent-Based is a durable, gloss finish, solvent-based sealer that's highly resistant to salt, acids, alkali, water, UV rays and abrasion. It can be brush-, roller- or spray-applied, and it's ideal for use with H&C® Decorative Concrete Stains.
H&C® SharkGrip™ Slip Resistant Additive is a micronized polymer that stirs into H&C coatings for slip resistance, fine texturing and gloss reduction. It stirs easily into most oil- and water-based paints and other coatings, due to its low oil absorption and high solvent resistance.
Concrete vs. wood floor
Turning an empty office space into a cozy bar took some effort, but Jerry Hudy also owns a contracting business, Hudy Painting Inc., which had the ability to do much of the work, including the decorative concrete floor. The flooring choice was based on both practical and aesthetic grounds.
"We were kicking around whether to do a concrete stain or put in a wood floor," Hudy says, "but a wood floor was not in the budget. The concrete was something easy for me to do, putting down the stain and the top coats. Besides, we wanted to find something that would work in the bar. It's a floor that gets washed once or twice a day, usually with a bleach and water solution, so we needed something that would hold up to that."
Hudy created the floor design with multiple colors of H&C® Semi-Transparent Decorative Concrete Stain, topped with two coats of H&C® Decorative Concrete Sealer Solvent-Based. The sealer protects the stained concrete and provides a glossy, washable finish. H&C® SharkGrip™ Slip Resistant Additive was added to the top coat of sealer to make the floor safer and less slippery, especially when wet.
Step-by-step
Jerry Hudy explains the floor finishing process:
"First, we had to patch and repair the concrete, because there had been trenches put in to install plumbing and electrical lines. There had also been metal stud walls before that were anchored into the slab, so there was a lot of spot patching," he says.
Then the crew went through with a floor grinder and ground down the patched areas until the concrete was like new. "Grinding the floor was the toughest part of the job," Hudy says. "We used a walk-behind diamond grinder, and a hand grinder around the edges." The floor had been carpeted and there was still some carpet adhesive they had to remove with the grinder.
After they finished grinding, they vacuumed the floor and applied stains using various sizes of Hudson sprayers. "It's not a specific pattern, just a rustic ‘North Country' look with a little marbling to it. We waited 24 hours to apply the first coat of sealer. For the second coat, we added the anti-slip ingredient," Hudy says.
Expanding into decorative concrete
Hudy Painting Inc. is based in Maple Grove, Minnesota. It keeps 10 to 12 employees busy year-round, doing about 70 percent new residential work and 30 percent commercial projects. The company branched out into decorative concrete floors when the 2008 recession hit, and Hudy was eager to take on any work that was available.
"We'd done some straight concrete painting before, including garage floors, but we wanted to get into floor grinding and applying epoxies. We took a couple of seminars offered by the paint store to learn about that. The seminars were very informative, especially if you haven't ever done the work before. It's free training, basically. You invest a little time to gain a whole lot of knowledge," Hudy says.
"I hadn't used an acrylic stain before the bar floor — we usually use acid stains — so we were pleasantly surprised how well it came out. The acid stains penetrate a lot deeper, but the latex was easier and more affordable because you don't have to neutralize it. We're very happy with the way it turned out. We love the color and get lots of compliments on the floor."
Want to expand your skills with decorative concrete floors? Talk to your H&C sales rep or a salesperson at your local Sherwin-Williams store about training seminars. With 3,900 locations, it's easy to find one near you.