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How to Stain Your Concrete Driveway Floor

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We saw this how-to on BeJane for acid staining of concrete driveways. We promptly wanted to know if the how-to could be applied to interior concrete floors, too. Turns out it can. Check out a photo of a concrete-stained interior after the jump...

 
 

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The steps given in How to Stain Your Concrete Driveway can be applied to many more places than just driveways (yay - because we're far from having a driveway). The staining looks great and can create many more colors than the rusty one shown.

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painting, fixing & repair, hard flooring, concrete staining

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Comments (5)

Does anyone know how to un-stain concrete? The place we just bought has this done to the concrete floors and I'm not a fan. Any experts out there know if it can be removed and how?

posted by canadian in swedish clothing on 2008-06-10 12:39:11
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I posted about concrete acid stain and provided links here:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/la/good-questions/what-to-do-with-this-patio-052618

I am a HUGE fan of concrete and what can be done with it.

For cisc, you can't unstain concrete. It is permanent. Read here:
http://www.concretenetwork.com/staining-concrete/how-concrete-stains-work.html

It's akin to dying your hair. With permanent dye. Which means there are two ways of changing it...

Remove it all (like shave your head or remove all the concrete that has been colored)...

or...

Put another color on top.

And that might depend on what kinds of sealers have been applied. So next you need to read about sealers...
http://www.concretenetwork.com/staining-concrete/protect-and-maintain-stained-concrete.html

Concrete stain only stains the top. It doesn't penetrate an entire slab of concrete, and thank goodness it doesn't as it would be very costly AND would affect your downstairs neighbor's ceilings.

So that concrete, as it wears, the stain will wear away over time. But you can see from sidewalks that 50 years of use doesn't make deep grooves in the middle of the sidewalk.

Since I don't know what your floor looks like, I would encourage you to spend a bit of time browsing the Concrete Network. And the links I provided.

There is the possibility, although I have not seen it done or read about it being done, that you could have your floors restained.

For instance, I like the blotchy look. It's like aged leather on the floor. So I would say "Yay! It's blotchy!" and you might look at it and say "Ug! Eww! It's blotchy!" Like this:
http://www.concretenetwork.com/staining-concrete/design-ideas/basement-floor.html

Reactive stains would pick up on variations in the lime content. But the nonreactive would have to have have different colors used to make the blotchiness...

Which means that you might be able to have them use the darker color over the lighter parts to get a more uniform darker color. That's just a guess.

Check out this image:
http://www.concretenetwork.com/photo-gallery/concrete-floors_1/95010-ca-diamond-d-company-stained-concrete-floor-stained-concrete-hallway_6687/

Could you live with a dark floor? Like that dark brown there? So if you have other colors, it would be neutralized???

The last idea is to have thinset done over your current floor, and then have it colored to your specs.

And lastly, colored sealer...remember the picture of the blotchy floor? Did you notice the blue squares? That's a cover up, if you read what happened, you'll see that colored sealer was used. So that's another option.

There ARE options, but "un-stain" is not one of them. I hope that the info is useful and that the images from the links will make you into a fan of concrete and all that can be done.

posted by TRUE BLUE on 2008-06-10 20:46:17
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Thanks for all the info! I love love love concrete, but just not tinted concrete- I prefer it in it's natural grey colour. Our floors are a light brown. Would sanding it work? I have a feeling I will just have to live with the colour.

posted by canadian in swedish clothing on 2008-06-11 19:14:27
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A few weeks ago I stained and sealed my concrete driveway. Now I noticed that in some places it is peeling including the stain. Now there are many white dots where both the stain and sealer have come off. Any suggestions? Need help.

posted by groovedad on 2008-08-12 21:32:20
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Well I had the same issue. But I do like the look. The space I have had an ugly brown stain on it. I went to concretenetwork.com , and did some research. I found a company called oddly enough... www.acidstainflooring.com , gee i wonder what they specialize it???? They examined the floor for me, and gave me an option to do a concrete overlay, which is like applying primer to concrete. It gave them a fresh canvas to work off of. They gave the floor a awesome tan color that now matches my decor. I would recommend you to look into that. The price wasn't bad, and the floor looks brand new. Hope that helps.

posted by LoveMySpace on 2008-09-22 16:13:26
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