A Colored Concrete Patio For Every Season

In the face of the popularity of wood decks, having a colored concrete patio is becoming more popular as a fundamental factor in modern restaurants as well as backyards. Much of that popularity is owed to having more supplementary decorative options than ever. The owners of today want their outdoor surfaces to offer definitive design versatility. As opposed to wood, concrete patios very certainly are much more durable and the owners also like that it has extremely low maintenance associated with them.

With hotels, motels and restaurants, a colored concrete patio is excellent to draw forth people who wish to lounge and be entertained, and in addition many architects and interior designers love how such patios can seamlessly blend with the various inside and outside spaces. This is why many of these establishments have found that they can add outdoor kitchens to these patios, and turn the patios into actual outdoor living rooms. They make sure to offer tremendously cozy seating areas, all manner of water features, and even fireplaces to emphasize coziness.

A colored concrete patio offers truly boundless design options. Imagine if you will how a colored concrete patio can actually be color coordinated to match the establishment’s exterior or even its landscaping. Today colored concrete can imitate any number of types of stones, slate flake and flagstone quartz, and thus designers are finding more and more new ways to introduce them into the patios.

Hotels, motels and restaurants have found that spending their money on these investments makes tremendous sense, as the costs are much lower and less labor intensive than making patios of bricks or even natural stonework. The amount of patterns that can be laid out, as well as the myriad of colors available have now made concrete a very reasonably priced choice. Landscape and Interior Designers as well as contractors of such locales have found that because concrete can be molded into any shape desired, that they could create extremely attractive venues even where there are space restrictions to be dealt with.

Upgrading a patio area with a colored concrete patio is truly a small investment which will return revenue for many years to come and also improve the ambiance of your location. Also concrete is so very easy to maintain without any regard to any weather conditions. Where paving stones used to be considered the very finest in such gardens, the costs and work of maintaining the grass and weeds that sprouted between them was certainly not cost efficient. Remember that wooden decks may warp, rot or at least will require periodic staining. To see the best that a colored concrete patio can offer you, contact the Silikal Corporation.

Restaurant Flooring Ideas: Finding the Best Fit for Your Restaurant Floor

Chances are you lit into this article since you are looking for restaurant flooring ideas. Perhaps you have had a restaurant for a while, and are seeking new ideas to completely change the look of your restaurant. Perhaps you are opening up a brand new restaurant. Either one is fine, because you know that above all the ambiance of a restaurant means more money in your pocket. Perhaps people have to be soothed when they come into your restaurant, they need to relax, after all this is a restaurant not a burger joint with kids screaming and crying because they spilled their milk shake.

Of course, above all a restaurant floor needs to be clean as can be, since it also must appeal in making people hungry. Unlike the days of old, you know that glue-down floor tiles are definitely not appealing. They can harbor all manner of dirt, left over crumbs of food, dirty floor cleaning water, and worse! Absolutely not conducive to a good appetite!

One of the newer trends in restaurants is a totally open kitchen, where you can actually watch the chefs cooking your food. One Italian restaurant has made a mint by allowing people to walk through their kitchen prior to making it to their table. This is a great idea because the kitchen is filled with great smelling Italian food, which the people can all see, and this leads them to become extremely hungry. In addition, they can see how clean the kitchen is, how spotless the floor is, and also they can see that the floor is definitely not slippery either for them as they pass by or for the chefs.

The utter functionality of a restaurant floor covers a lot of great restaurant flooring ideas. Functionality means that your kitchen floor is required to be unproblematic to clean, fully resistant to moisture, be helpful to your staff to be able to stand on their feet for extended periods, last a long time and even be able to endure the power of fallen utensils as well as high traffic from both patrons and staff.

Each restaurant will need it’s own ambiance. What is fitting in a Jewish delicatessen is different than that which will fit in a high bracket clientele of French connoisseurs and gourmets. Actually one of the best flooring choices that will give you the best restaurant flooring ideas is Silikal. The pictures of various restaurant floors that they have created will downright astound you.

The Silikal reactive resin restaurant flooring absolutely cannot harbor bacteria or mold for the reason that it is a totally non-porous, and pin hole free seamless surface. But it’s also slip resistant, and even so very durable that it will require little to no repairs in its lifetime. Now those are great restaurant flooring ideas!

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Concrete Looks Like Rock but if its Not Rock, What is it?

Perhaps your boss has asked you to find concrete looks like rock, and as you begin to search you hit on many such products. Now, trying to decide which is the best concrete looks like rock is your next task. Thus you begin to do research on it.

That is when you find out that there are actually different names for the same products. For instance, you may find slate tile, stone tile, stone look tile, quarry stone tile, quarry stone and quarry tile, yet they all fall under the header of concrete looks like rock your boss told you to look for!

The more you dig, the more questions you have. For instance when the boss said concrete looks like rock, did he mean slate, sandstone, river rock, quartz, flagstone or bluestone? You have found out that there are many colors of different kinds of rocks, thus the boss will have to tell you exactly what it is that caught his eye, and you will have to go to that particular site to round out your questions. The man made stones all look as if they could easily fit his descriptions, that’s for sure.

Finally after much digging you come onto a Silikal site. There you trip over what they call their naturals, which are exactly like native poured river rock. The colors alone are Razorback Red, Black Pearl, Cantina Pink, and a gorgeous Tan. Now we’re definitely talking concrete that looks like rock!

The site says that this is definitely a decorating coup, and you could not agree more. The more you read about it, the more this has to be what the boss wants. After all even though it appears to be a rough surface, it is definitely gentle on little toes so that it can even be utilized in a children’s area if you so wish. Even pet areas and dog kennels are so much nicer with that river rock flowing through it. As if the appearance is not something thoroughly special, you find out that it is completely simple to keep clean since it has a completely seamless installation.

Now, your imagination is completely snared, and you know for sure you’ve finally found the correct site. You confer with your boss and tell him, now spill out all that you now know about Silikal, how it is exactly what he was seeking and installed only by true professionals. We ride along in my car and can only talk about this new material. When we get to the Silikal office you too fall in love with Silikal, and thus you reward me by taking me to dinner in a restaurant with a Silikal floor!

Concrete Coatings for Driveways: Strength Isn’t Always In the Foundation

Driveways – the most common driveway of yore was to have a gravel driveway. What this meant was digging up the area, for as deep as you wanted the driveway to be, then using vibrations from a vibrating plate to mash down the dirt and then using leftover rock as a base before finally putting in the gravel. It was a huge amount of work, gravel seemed to always disappear from the driveway, and often was subject to washouts during heavy rains, and the work had to be redone all over again.

Driveways then received an improvement, and driveways were made of asphalt. Now asphalt is a mixture of things, but basically it contains 80% carbon. Now you know why asphalt is black. Sulfur and a few other minerals are in asphalt. The tar is mixed with an aggregate such as perhaps sand or gravel. It is then laid down after it is heated, and a steamroller presses it down. So now you have a driveway made of asphalt. Problems do occur with asphalt though. For instance it bears the weight of your automobiles, which crack it, and literally the elements can wear out asphalt. Worse yet is freezing and thawing up north, which also makes asphalt crack and creates potholes through the expansion and contraction of trapped moisture.

Now, along come concrete coatings for driveways. Unlike the problems with the other driveways mentioned above, with concrete there are no fears about weeds, erosion, weather or actually any other problems with nature trying to ruin that beautiful driveway.

Using a product called Silikal will enable the Silikal contractor to give the concrete coatings for driveways the appearance and color of stone, or even a marble, terra cotta or travertine finish. The Silikal worker can duplicate grout lines, all manner of natural shadows, and even bring forth mottled textures to the concrete so that it appears to be totally authentic. No one using that driveway will be able to tell that it is not real tile, or some kind of real stonework.

Probably the best news yet about concrete coatings for driveways is that they absolutely do not fall apart. Those driveways will be there probably longer than the building that they drive up to. Thus, no matter what business you have be it a motel, hotel or restaurant in need of a very nice driveway, be sure and turn down gravel driveways, or asphalt driveways, and instead say yes to Silikal concrete coatings for driveways!

A Protective Fluid Foundation For Today’s World

A protective fluid foundation sounds complicated, but it really is not, though attaining it might be rather complicated if you do not utilize the correct products. A protective fluid foundation is actually nothing more than construction talk for a water-based waterproofed foundation to a building.

Some formulations of such protective fluid foundation are nothing more than a single step, fully liquid applied, waterproofing membrane that is even water based, that is sprayed along the exterior of the foundation walls of an edifice under construction. The formulation ordinarily consists of an elastomeric waterproofer as well as a sealer. Of course they also have a high solids content so that it can properly seal the concrete or the foam insulation, or the polystyrene insulation board as the particular construction method demands.

Once dried, these formulations will cure into a fully seamless, non-deteriorating rubber film or membrane, which will then expand and contract when subject to variable temperatures. Most of these protective fluid foundation formulations do not contain volatile or unsafe solvents. Thus these formulations are referred to as VOC compliant. That is important as it means that it has eliminated any environmental and health considerations that may arise during the application.

Silikal, whose products are incredibly well known and highly trusted in the construction world, carries one of these protective fluid foundation formulations. They offer highly effective dampproofing as well as wall waterproofing that is actually applied in a liquid state, directly on the construction site, however it cures in a startlingly short space of time which allows for construction contractors to move forward without having to wait a long time for the foundation to dry. This results in little to absolutely no time delay on that building site, and in today’s world time is money.

Due to Silikal’s immensely low permeability, it will completely prevent water, air and even chemical transmission that would lead to mold and mildew growth along the foundation. In addition it will protect against many bacteria, algae, fungi, radon gasses and other detrimental agents that may be carried through by normal and common soil conditions. In addition, the product cures into a highly flexible state. That means that it can actually bridge any cracks that may occur in the future because it is a flexible membrane.

You will find that the Silikal scientists work night and day to find new improvements to such products as flooring and even protective fluid foundation products. Silikal is truly an amazing company.