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Concrete Decor - Index

Concrete Decor - Concrete Decor Magazine, The Journal for Decorative Concrete - Index

Polished Perspectives
Ten Years After:
A Look Back at
Polished Concrete’s
First Decade
76 | www.ConcreteDecor.net | Dec. ’07/Jan. ’08
Grinding with a classic MasterCraft swing machine. Note the weights
that have been added for increased head pressure.
by Peter Wagner, CSI
still vividly remember my fi rst large polished concrete job. Back
I in 2000, the equipment we used was somewhere between a Rube
Goldberg design, a homemade go-cart and equipment adapted from
the stone restoration and fl oor-cleaning industries. Manufacturers
were just starting to visualize equipment solely for the polished
concrete industry. If you want to visualize the difference between the
equipment today and then, you need go no further than comparing
a Ford Model T to a Lexus RX Hybrid. It’s time to reminisce, not just
for the sake of reminiscing, but to understand both how far we’ve
come and how far we still have to go.
Let’s set the ground rules: Polished concrete is defi ned here as
the combination of diamond grinding and polishing in conjunction
with applying densifi er/hardeners, with or without color.
No one denies that, intentionally or inadvertently, concrete was
ground and polished prior to the late 1990s. But it was not carried
out as a separate industry as it is today. For example, RetroPlate’s
fi rst formulations were in late 1997 or early 1998, but by the time
labels were designed it was 1999 — hence the registered name
“RetroPlate 99.”
Polishing concrete has progressed from an industrial application
focused on repairing dusting and spalling concrete to an industry
that is not only function-oriented but also design- and sustainabilityoriented.
We’ve gone from a time of adapting equipment from other
industries to having nearly 20 legitimate equipment manufacturers,
Photos courtesy of Peter Wagner