Concrete floor

While waiting for the mosaic tile we planned to finish the concrete substrate floor made by the developer of the property. It turned out to be unsuitable for the finished floor. We were planning to stain it and seal it. Unfortunately the concrete was of such a poor quality and so brittle that we were forced to pour our own layer of self-leveling fast curing concrete.
It is a very simple process but extremely easy to screw up. The concrete cures within 20 minutes and that's the maximum amount of time you have to spread the mix around and smooth it. That means from the moment you pour the water into your concrete mix. We have divided the space into major areas and had a concrete mixer rented to speed up the process. We were not able to mix it all at once so we had to carefully plan every move and layout for every bucket poured, pre-measure batches of water and concrete and with a help of extra family members we did it in the course of 3 days.
Before we had to clean the floor of any loose material and prime it.
The floor was not perfect but good enough for our purposes. Some imperfections added to the character.

Priming:

Pouring concrete:
The last batch we had to mix by hand because it was already 11pm and we had a visit from the building security with a complaint from our neighbors about strange thumping sound from the rented concrete mixer.


Before staining (about 2 weeks later) we did several color tests with different intensity. We used an acid stain and seal product from French company Ezchem Europe that also provides a wax for final finishing. The results can be really beautiful but also quite unpredictable.

Final look:
The scoring of the surface was done before staining. We did it along the control joints that had been done according to our plans by the developer on the original floor. Having our own floor done on top of it allowed us to straighten the lines that were very crooked, sometimes missing the point by a foot!