Decorative Concrete - Helpful Articles
History of Decorative Concrete Source: CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION MAGAZINE By Joe Nasvik Between 1890 and 1920 many companies, especially precast companies who produced members for building facades, used colors and stains to make their work more interesting. Some mixed pigment into fresh concrete for a casting; others submerged their castings in solutions similar to chemical stains. Some of these creative and ingenious techniques are described in journals and publications from that era, which can be viewed today at the Portland Cement Association (PCA) library in Skokie, Ill. The “fathers” of this industry were
Some were in the right place at the right time; others went through painstaking research to develop products and processes. Today the decorative concrete market is growing faster than any other segment of the concrete industry, with hundreds of manufacturers and thousands of contractors. But none of this could have happened if not for the development of strong, durable concrete. It takes highly skilled concrete finishers and an understanding of concrete basics to install work that makes owners want concrete. Here are some of the people and companies that got us started. Adding color to concrete
We've known for a long time that metallic oxide colors aren't faded by ultraviolet light. At the turn of the century, many concrete craftspeople were blending pigments to color a specific application. Some kept recipe files for their color formulas used on projects. But to increase the use of color required products that were consistent batch after batch. Contractors wanted color admixtures that would mix evenly in concrete and be permanently bonded in the cement paste. In 1915, Lynn Mason Scofield started a business on Dearborn Street in Chicago that was later renamed the L.M. Scofield Company. It was the first company to manufacture color for concrete. His first products included color hardeners (cement, color, and aggregate broadcast on the surface of fresh concrete to color and harden the surface), colorwax integral color, sealers, and chemical stains. In 1920 he moved the company to Los Angeles, believing that southern California was a better market for decorative concrete than the rest of the country. Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, Mary Pickford, and other famous people used large amounts of his products when they built their homes. Stamping patterns As a contractor, Bowman installed exposed aggregate concrete walls and slabs in Carmel, Calif. By 1950 he began experimenting with ways to pattern his work. He first tried a single wooden blade, then two blades set apart the width of a brick, and finally platform stamps that imprinted several pattern units at a time. His first stamps were of wood, then sheet metal, and finally cast aluminum platforms. In 1970, the Bomanite Corp., using his patents, franchised contractors across the United States to install decorative concrete using this process. Bowman's fascination was with the creative process—a passion that stayed with him until his death at age 90. In 1956 Bill Stegmeier, owner of the Stegmeier Co., began installing his company's “Cool Deck” process for swimming pool decks—a finish that kept bare feet from getting too hot on sunny days. By adding color to a powder broadcast onto the surface, he achieved an antiquing effect. But it turned out that this “release powder” also kept texture stamps from sticking to the concrete. So Stegmeier invented a latex rubber tool to impart a wood grain texture to fresh concrete.
Bowman's cast aluminum tools were heavy, had a limited life, and printed only patterns, not textures. Jon Nasvik became the first to develop urethane stamps that were light and long-lived. In the late 1970s he built a plastic stamp that imprinted both pattern and texture on fresh concrete. The first pattern for commercial use was a broken used brick pattern. The patterns that followed were used by Bomanite contractors exclusively and were called “Bomacron.” Stegmeir's release powder made it possible to use these stamps. Around this same time The Disney Corporation was designing EPCOT in Orlando and wanted unusual decorative concrete patterns for the project. It liked Bomacron and commissioned the development of the first 12 to 15 patterns. Today textured, patterned stamps are the standard. Chemical stains
Before 1980, specifiers often expected flat, opaque colors like paint, resulting in many disputes between specifiers and contractors. Mike Miller, the concretist, Benicia, Calif., was among the first to maximize the variability of stain colors and demonstrate the idea. He found ways to use stains artistically and inspired designers to be more creative, thus leading the current resurgence in popularity for chemical staining. Overlay cement
Credit for inventing overlay cement goes to John (Jack) Crossfield. In 1938, while an employee of Armstrong Cork in England, he applied for a patent with the title “Plastic Composition.” He mixed natural rubber latex with portland cement, aggregate, and other materials to make an overlay cement coating for steel ship decks to provide both traction and corrosion protection. His patent didn't come through until 1941, and by that time, due to World War II, latex had become scarce, so the company, now Crossfield Products located in the United States, went on to experiment with polymer resins. In 1971 Les Stambaugh wondered about the possibility of spraying polymer cement through a hopper gun and then knocking down the spatter with a trowel to finish a swimming pool deck. His idea worked, and he later started the Superdek company in Phoenix, which became Sundek. Today, the use of overlay cement for decorative purposes is growing. It can be mixed with color, sprayed on concrete slabs, and “troweled down” in thin applications. It can be manufactured to be self-leveling for floors and vertical surface finishes, and used for stamping and texturing concrete patterns. Its creative potential seems to be limitless. Paper stencil patterning
The process is simple. After placing concrete, workers carefully embed paper stencils on the surface then broadcast color hardener, which is floated and finished. When initial set occurs, the stencils are carefully removed, revealing tile, stone, and brick patterns with plain concrete colored joints. The paper stencils can also be used with overlay cement to decorate existing concrete slabs. Concrete countertops
Using concrete to make counters, tables, and furniture isn't a new idea. It's impossible to know who first built a counter with concrete, but the first business to specialize in countertops was Buddy Rhodes Studios in the early 1980s. At first his specialty was concrete furniture, but in 1984 he built a reception desk for a top graphic designer in San Francisco. By 1986 he had his first contract to construct a kitchen countertop. He began with both cast-in-place and precast work, but gradually focused on precast counters. Today he is regarded as the father of concrete countertops. Formliners for architectural walls
The first masonry unit formliners that could be rotated to achieve random pattern effects were invented and patented by Paul and Peter Nasvik. Sandblast stenciling
Sandblasting patterns into vertical and horizontal concrete became popular seventy-five years ago, but was painstaking work. There are many ways to make stencils, but plastic sheet adhesive templates developed by Minnesota Mining for the stone grave marker industry became the most useful for concrete. There are two ways to use adhesive templates: adhering them to concrete surfaces and cutting patterns out by hand, or using computer-assisted drawing software, common to the advertising industry, to design patterns (which can be very complicated and intricate), cutting them into the template material using computer-guided precision plotters. Glen Roman, coming from the advertising industry, started a division at the Brickform Company, Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., adapted the technology to produce adhesive stencil patterns for decorative concrete. Polishing concrete Concrete floors were first polished in Europe 15 years ago—mostly warehouse floors—polished in an attempt to solve the problems created by epoxy coatings that debonded due to concrete moisture issues, and to stop heavy maintenance bills. HTC, a Swedish manufacturer of grinding equipment, introduced the idea to the United States. The first known installation was a 40,000-square-foot warehouse floor for the Bellagio in Las Vegas in 1999. But the decorative possibilities were soon recognized and today there is a significant market for commercial and residential polished floors and countertops. There is much ongoing experimentation with color, embedded objects, chemical stains, and exposed aggregates. We've only scratched the surface
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