I also appreciated that your quote was spot on. Your prices are competitive, and even if you were out of line on the price, I would still try to deal with you folks. I will be passing your card to Glen at Batistella (the developers for my building) and will contact you soon about my own concrete counter tops that need some improvement. Thanks.

Get over the idea that concrete floors belong only in the garage or the laundry room. With a shot of colour and a polished sheen of a finish, they can work in any room of the house. Just ask Gary Jones. The Richmond-based president of Smart Surface Technology was brought in to finish the concrete floors that run from top to bottom of a $20-million San Francisco house.

Think Yaletown loft rather than sidewalk and you’re on the right track. The type of floors Jones’s company creates are smooth, burnished canvases of colour, without a square inch of dull grey concrete in sight. Growing numbers of homeowners are noticing decorative concrete floors in commercial buildings and realizing they may be the answer to their quest for a practical, contemporary-looking floor.

The wow factor is also a big draw, Jones says. “A lot of people want concrete because they want to be unique,” he says. “They don’t want to be like the guy down the road – they want something cool.” And Jones has lots of ways to achieve that look.

Under the Colormaker label, his company markets both stains and dyes that can be used to colour an existing concrete floor, as well as colour-enhanced resurfacing treatments. All three types of products are water-based and sink right into the concrete rather than sitting on top of it like paint which tends to chip and flake over the years.

Colormaker has eight shades of stains, which are spread over an existing concrete floor and create an irregular pattern of colour by reacting with the lime in the concrete. These generally produce earth tones like copper and bronze, Jones says. Water-based dyes come in 20 shades, many of them vivid, and are sprayed on top of the concrete for a translucent effect. Colormaker also makes resurfacing treatments – essentially a thin coating of concrete, pre-coloured in 25 shades – that can go right over ceramic tile or concrete that’s irregular or in poor condition.

That was the situation in a house in Vancouver in the Main Street corridor with rough, uneven concrete floors. The homeowner chose a re-surfacing treatment in a warm beige colour to smooth out the floor and add an up-to-date look to the fairly conventional home.

Even though the floor is in a below-grade basement, it is warm to the touch. When properly insulated from below, Jones says, concrete floors absorb the ambient temperature of the room, making them far more comfortable underfoot than unheated ceramic tile. Concrete also breathes, he says, meaning that it doesn’t trap moisture and become musty like carpets often do when installed in basements. As well, if you get bored with the look of your floor, it’s relatively easy process to change it.

“If in five years you want to change the colour of the floor, we can do that,” Jones says – just remove the sealer, apply a new colour and re-seal it. And you’re not restricted to just a stain, a dye or a re-surfacing treatment – you can combine one or more to create a wide variety of colours and effects. “You end up with a thousand combinations if you really play around with it,” says Jones. You can also vary the intensity of the surface sheen by putting down just a couple of layers of finish or a dozen, he says. And maintenance is easy – clean up spills quickly and then every year or two, mop on a liquid wax “to give it a nice sheen again.”

Jones says he’s seen decorative concrete floors that are 14 or 15 years old and still look great. “You can’t really degrade one of these surfaces if it is put down right.” About 70 per cent of Jones’ customers in the U.S. and Canada are commercial, including retailers like Whole Foods, Starbucks and Bootlegger, but the residential market for decorative concrete is growing, he says.

“Many homeowners have seen it in a restaurant or store and they want that floor, he says, and seeing finished concrete on the floor of a high-traffic business tells you that it can take a lot of wear and tear.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2006 jblain@png.canwest.com

***Pantheon Decorative Concrete Products offers two and three day hands-on workshops to explore the endless possibilities of using Colormaker Products. Call 403-828-4581 or email us for further information. The Colormaker products website is www.colormakerfloors.com.

FACEOFF: Dad Damian Angelozzi drops the ‘puck’ for sons Jacob, 5, (left) and Jesse, 7, on the family’s miniature hockey rink in the basement. The rink – made with special microtopping over concrete – is a replica of an NHL rink, right down to the bluelines, wall boards and, of course, Flames centre-ice insignia.

Airdrie Echo – For Airdrie’s Nicole Samms and Damian Angelozzi, putting a hockey rink in the basement is all in a day’s work.

After Angelozzi heard about a hockey rink floor concept from a friend in Edmonton, he and Samms decided to see what they could do with their own special areas of expertise – they own Pantheon Decorative Concrete Products – to create something truly special for their sons, Jesse, 7, Jacob, 5, and Evan, nine months. So the couple set to work recreating a regulation National Hockey League rink, complete with lines, goal creases, decals and other special touches to make the finished product look as real as possible.

“We took it to the extreme,”Samms said, “because we got the baseboards and walls painted.”

To begin with, the basement’s concrete floor was covered with a special microtopping. Special stencils were made for the decals and solvent-based dyes were used, as they will penetrate the cement. Then the floor was sealed with a solvent-based sealant and finished with a durable, high-gloss wax.

The result is a meticulously detailed ‘rink’ – and it’s as slippery as one, too, which makes it all that much more fun for the boys.

“It basically looks like an NHL hockey rink,”Angelozzi said.

The floor is definitely a hit with the younger generation.

“Our kids love the floor,”Samms said. “They think this is like the coolest floor going.”

The older generation is pretty excited, too.

For Angelozzi, who used to play hockey in the halls of his family home, the basement ‘rink’ has been a blast. And Samms’ brother, who is a huge hockey fan, feels right at home.

“You couldn’t get him out from there,”she said.

For the couple, the project has been a fun way to play around and experiment with various decorative concrete products.

And since the hockey rink has proven so popular, plans are to now create a ‘soccer pitch’ on the other side of the basement.

While Samms and Angelozzi did go to great lengths to replicate an NHL rink, they are quick to point out that the project is possible for others without their special knowledge.

“This floor is definitely something that anyone with some handyman/woman skills can do,”Samms said. “If you enjoy do-it-yourself projects, this can be a fun and easy solution for a basement floor.”

The idea could strike a chord with a wide variety of homeowners.

“This is a great concept for bachelors,”Samms said.

“And (hockey) fanatics with kids and families,”Angelozzi added.

Granite and hardwood are beautiful products, but they lack that edge, that certain something, that makes them ultra-current and urban.

And that’s why today’s uber-hip homeowners are gravitating towards another material for their flooring, fireplace mantles and countertops: Concrete.

It’s durable, attractive and different, and it’s gaining in popularity.

That’s why we asked the experts: Why is concrete a good choice for home interiors?

“It’s totally custom and durable,” says Kelly Falconi of Concrete Innovations.

“It’s like a higher end granite – it’s around $74 per square foot* and up, and it’s about as heavy as granite.”

But its look is distinctly different, she adds.

Whether it’s typical grey, contemporary white, glittery, coloured, striated or flecked, concrete countertops can suit any home environment.

“You can inlay anything – sports paraphernalia in a bar, fossils, rocks, your kids’ hand prints. It’s totally custom, and that’s what sets it apart from other stone,” Falconi says. “It’s really come a long way, as well. It’s very refined, very contemporary and crisp and clean.”

Indeed, atop kitchen and bath cabinets, a slab of concrete is unexpected, yet stylish, but it doesn’t have to be sleek and slick, suited only to a contemporary abode.

“You can make it traditional as well,” Falconi says.

“You can use cornice moldings as part of the mold building, and we can use different shaped molds to put out a product with a custom, traditional profile.”

In fact, that’s one way to get a stunning fireplace surround, she says – today, many stylish homeowners are using concrete rather than tile for their fireplace surrounds, mantles and hearths, while others are selecting the material as a flooring option.

“We can pretty much do whatever the imagination wants,” says Damian Angelozzi, co-owner of Pantheon Decorative Concrete Products.

“That’s the really inspiring thing about concrete – we can do things with it that you can’t do with traditional building materials such as hardwood or tile. With concrete, there’s nothing holding you back.”

He says concrete flooring can be warm to the touch when installed with in-floor heating, and can be just as warm and welcoming as hardwood. A variety of colours, patterns, textures and dyes mean flooring can be obviously concrete or can masquerade as tile, marble, or even an NHL hockey rink.

“Pretty much whatever colour palette you have, we can work with,” he says. “The colour palette is as broad as a paint store selection – we can do yellow, blue, green, red. We can mix colours together in the concrete, we can make more variation in colour, we can give it a marbleized look. We can warm it up in a coffee-coloured brown, or keep it in the grey industrial sort of look. We’ve even created a replica of an NHL hockey rink, all using concrete and dyes – none of it is paint, so there is no possibility of it flaking or coming off.”

And that’s what makes it an ideal selection for any household – it’s long-lasting and stylish, and it’s customized to boot.

“People are catching on and seeing what the benefits are to using concrete in their houses,” Angelozzi says.

“There are so many different options and ways of making it look that it’s just a really exciting way to go.”

© Calgary Sun 2009

****NOTE: Concrete flooring starts at $4.00 sq. ft.