They wanted a floor that looked as good as the shiny new cars that would sit on top of it.
The owners of Safro Toyota Dealership had a misconception about concrete floors that is going to sound familiar to a lot of concrete contractors out there. 'All concrete is the same, right?' Shawn Wardall, the contractor that the building owners hired, recounted their initial thinking this way. "Everybody seems to believe that concrete is concrete,” he said. “There are no differences to concrete. It comes in a truck. You pour it. It gets hard. You polish it up. Therefore if I see [another polished floor] somewhere, I should be able to have what that looks like."
Thankfully Gary Dipilato and the Safro construction team worked with Shawn and his crew to learn about the different ways that polished concrete can be finished. And after several different test areas with different mix designs and finishing processes, the team landed an optimal mix design and finishing technique.
Check out the video to also see how the project went about protecting the floor from harsh Wisconsin winters (and the de-icing salts that come with them).