The Kirkpatrick's D.I.Y. Project 2006 (Year Two)
Staining the Concrete
March 4 - 5, 2006
For the most part, things went well on Saturday and we were able to stain the concrete.
Technically, it is called acid staining. It is not a color, like paint or even furniture stain, that
you apply to the concrete, but acid. The acid is specially formulated to react with the concrete
in such a way as to produce the desired look. Again, you don't apply color, you apply
acid.
Mike applies plastic to the door to protect it from the acid, which is corrosive.
I spray the acid onto the concrete wearing a face mask and gloves for protection.
The acid was a greenish liquid that sprayed on relatively clear. It reacted
quickly and started altering the look of the concrete almost immediately.
This is how it looked after only about 20 minutes.
There was a lot of floor to cover.
Mike puts the finishing touches on the family room.
The hallway to the garage/bedrooms.
The last spot.
You can see how quickly the color appeared.
Staining was the easy part. Once that dried, we had to scrub the entire floor,
section by section, using a 2-part process. The first step was neutralizing the acid
with a mixture of baking soda and water. That left a brownish, milky liquid, which had
to be removed with a Shop-Vac. Then we had to rinse the same section with clean
water, which also had to be removed with the Shop-Vac.
After LOTS of scrubbing...
squeegeeing...
vacuuming...
and more squeegee work, we were FINALLY done. With the staining, anyway.
Here's what it looks like when wet. We hope that's what it will look like
once we apply the sealer. We didn't get that far because the sealer was too
thick to be sprayed on using the sprayers we have. So we have to seal it
later. (It looks a little orange in this picture because of the flash.)
Now, for the photo of the week.
On the way back from town with lunch on Sunday, I saw some turkeys. We'd seen
the same ones the night before. Luckily Mike's camera was in the truck.
I zoomed in a bit so you could get a better look.
I got a couple of close-ups, but their backs are apparently
iridescent, which caused an awful glare.
That's all for this week. We hope to seal the floor on March 11.
