A Mid-Century Modern Home in Southwest Fort Wayne
Last week we completed a residential concrete polishing project in a mid-century modern home located in a woods on the southwest side of Fort Wayne. This concrete floor was original to the home as raw building products, such as metal and concrete, are staples in mid-century architecture. Mid-century modern is a style that can be seen in graphic design, interior design and architecture. This style generally depicts the developments in modern design at the time between 1933 and the mid 1950’s
When the home was initially built the concrete served not only a structural purpose for the floor but also was integrally colored black and sealed to serve as the finished floor. Through the years this floor was eventually covered with carpet and long forgot about. When our client, Linda bought the home almost 20 years ago she knew she wanted to bring back the concrete floor. At the time, little was known about properly finishing the concrete so painting the surface seemed like the most logical solutoin. The floor had been painted multiple times in the last 20 years as the paint continued to peel and flake off the surface.
POLISH
Remove the paint and polish the concrete floor
Linda had found us online and thought we may have a better solution to her flooring problem than continuing to paint the surface. When dealing with older concrete floors we have two options to finish the concrete. We can either work with the existing concrete and refinish the surface (similar to refinishing hardwood floors) or apply an overlay to the surface to cover up problems or rough areas. Since the concrete was in good shape we decided to try our hands at refinishing the concrete floors. This process involved removing the paint and polishing the concrete to a Level 1 – 400 grit finish. The polishing process required multiple passes and posed some challenges. These challenges included various heights of concrete floors and also a large amount of vertical concrete polishing. There was also no base trim in the space, so edge work and details took an additional 30 hours of labor. The floor was originally integrally colored black but we also included a black concrete dye in our process to help color patch spots and revitalize the original color.
The owner was very pleased with the results and we were happy to again bring back some life to a forgotten concrete floor and work in such a cool home.
