FOUND OUT THE NEEDS OF THE CLIENT
The object is an office space at the Danilovskaya Manufactory in the loft style. The whole building consisted of several buildings, one of which was a pre–revolutionary building, made of red brick, with thick walls. It was restored, and the premises were turned into offices. Our company was invited to the facility by the general contractor, because one of the problems in this room was the floor covering. Once a concrete floor with a hardener was poured there, on which polymer paint was later applied. Time passed, and a layer of polymer material of dark gray color began to peel off, the floor was covered with a kind of bald spots. A significant role in all this was played by the violation of the painting technology. The second problem is small cracks across the entire surface area. Paul looked, to put it mildly, unpresentable.
The customer – the tenant of the office – saw the solution to the problems in repainting the surface for a new one and thus making it more "fresh". Our chief engineer, using all his experience, understood perfectly well that the proposed option did not work very well, because the "exfoliation" would continue anyway. The basis for the coating is concrete with a hardener, and it does not absorb and therefore does not contribute to good bonding of polymer materials. Therefore, we were looking for another solution that would be suitable for the loft style and at the same time would look aesthetically pleasing and have high operational properties. For all this complex of requests, we have found a solution – a technology called "polished concrete". It consists of the following: the old base is ground, then a liquid hardener is introduced into it and polished at the end. The coating acquires a smooth and mirror-like appearance, the pores of concrete open, the pattern of concrete. The floor has a kind of mosaic appearance. The finish look of such a coating is glossy and mirrored, but the client just wanted to avoid this, because the reflections, overflows distract the attention of employees. We had to look for a solution to meet this need – polished, but not shiny concrete.
What have we done? Several samples of the coating in the form of small squares were made free of charge at the same facility. The client clearly saw all the options and chose one as the main one, after which our guys picked up a matte, not glossy, shade.
