Hello everyone,
I have been looking over this forum for months in the lead up to our house starting. After scouring the web and the forum for information on Timber & Vinyl flooring we have ended up going with polished concrete instead!
I am going to post some updates on what we are doing just in case people can learn anything from what we are doing or answers questions people may have been asking.
Here is a run down of what we are doing.
We have 2 young boys who are 100 miles an hour 100% of the time. Picking a floor had to tick 3 boxes for us - and in this order
1. Hard wearing
2. Easy to clean
3. Look good
We started looking around and started with timber. We soon moved on from that as it ticked 2 and 3 but hard wearing we were not confident on. We have had cyprus floors before and the boys scratched them alot and effected the look.
We then moved on to vinyl plank flooring. This one - and still is - a very good choice. It ticks all the above boxes - very hard wearing, very easy to clean and also looks great - if you pick a good quality one.
In looking at Vinyl plank flooring its hard to find large displays of it to see. We ended up shopping around and found the Karndean range - Art Select. It looks great and is hard wearing. Actually if you are looking at this type of floor message me - I have loads of pics of houses with vinyl installed.
We moved away from vinyl in the end as we started to worry about the look - as the vinyl tries to replicate the look of timber I could not find any that replicated Australian timber.
So we looked around more and came across polished concrete. I mentioned this to alot of friends and we got a 50/50 response. People either hated the idea of it OR loved it. Funny thing is that only about 1 friend had actually seen it.
So we posted a message on facebook and said "who likes polished concrete flooring?"
We got a message from a friend that said their sister had just done it - so we went over there and it all started from there. We saw it at a home in Pemulwuy and loved it straight away.
We called around a few places to get some quotes and the options that were available - there is limited places to see it or the variations that we could find.
I started to scour the internet and blogs looking for it and came across a few posts from onc_artisan on the homeone forum. From reading alot of his comments and posts he is very helpful, very informative and knows his stuff. He has also posted some awesome pics of polished concrete floors in other posts.
I sent him a message and he was actually working in Lithgow (cold cold cold) doing a slab right now.
This was perfect timing so I sent him a message and he got back to me straight away and we met on Saturday. After talking for about an hour we were very impressed and he listened mainly to understand what we were after and then made some suggestions on what we could and couldn't do. Very short notice as well as our slab was due to be poured the following week!
We are building with a NSW project builder who has been very flexible and happy to let us go ahead and do it - and get their concreters to work with onc.
The slab is getting poured this Friday so I will will update later as to what happened, some pics, my experience etc - hopefully this info helps anyone that is looking at polished concrete.
This is what we are doing,
1. polishing 90sq inside the house (entry, living, dining, kitchen, hallways)
2. polishing 25sq outside alfresco (outside but under the roof)
3. we are not paying extra for decorative concrete from the concrete supplier - instead we are seeding some stones into the slab when the slab is poured. This means that they pour the slab and then throw out rocks into the slab so that it is just under the top surface. The rocks will be gold (Gold to White in colour) to add some colour to the concrete.
I will post some pictures later in the week and some updates to my experience etc.
You can also follow it on my blog here
http://www.drewandrenee.blogspot.com
As I have said above if this helps anyone in their process then that is great as it would have helped me! And from my experience so far talk in the forum to Onc as he has been great.
Cheers