Mary there are many different types of stains and dyes on the market. If you will pick which type of stain you want to use acid stain, water based, acetone, etc.. That will make giving you ideas and tricks much easier. If you google concrete stains you will get more info and pictures than you can read in a week. Each has its advantages and disadvantages but you need to see what pictures and designs you like best then you can figure out which type stain will give you that look. Then we can
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help you with the how to on application. Get ready to be overwhelmed with info, id just find pictures and then ask what kind of stain will give me this..... thats less headache
Mary the Restore we started talking about is not easy for a professional much less a homeowner to use. If you are doing it yourself, I would use the concrete stain easily obtainable from the local paint store, where you can also get some helpful advice.
A lady called the local paint store this week looking for someone with experience to come fix her deck. A handyman tried to put the stuff on and botched it up. It's really not for non-professional app for wood, much less concrete.
Peace, if they got it at a paint store, its probably the Encore product. Similar, but different. Encore is a blend of cemetitious materials and polymers. You add a top quality latex paint for color and "give". As with Restore. its not easy to apply properly. In this space, I prefer Deck-it from EZ chem. It has additional latex in the mix and manages surface flex better.
I was around during the devekopment of these materials.... Its in the details where they work better or not..... Id rank them top to bottom,,, Deck-it, Encore, Deck Revive. At least Deck-it had a PHD chemist tweak it to work better than the others.... Give me a call and I can explain why...
deck revive by gulf synthetics was the invention of jeff moreau who left gulf & now owns encore. as was gulf originally, encore is based/manufactured in cartersville, ga. he's built up a national distribution network & they're doing well. [ no financial interest in any of these products but we tried gulf & wouldn't recommend it/them ]
Its funny how Deck-it is the best of the bunch, yet has zero marketing dollars behind it. Its all about the chemistry, not pretty pictures and unsubstantiated claims. @ Charles, its all about the materials ability to flex between hot and cold swings and remain bonded. Deck-it has extra Latex in its mix. This is beyond the amount provided by the added paint materials. Without it, the coating and its coated surface will delaminate over time. Regardless, as with any of these materials,
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you must keep a coat of sealer on the surface or you will see white chalky marks over time from the cement components.
we used the gulf product on our deck & i didn't get a thrill running up my leg ( tnx, chris matthews, for the phrase ),,, encore was/is a much better product imho,,, have to try deck-it next
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Any ideas moving forward?
!! should ladt 12