Proper reactions to not finding a unicorn - concrete floor theory part 3

The perfect concrete floor is like a unicorn - I can imagine it, but have never seen one.  Concrete slabs are handmade with every re-do leaving clues.  Human effort and the material converge with on the pour day and the nuances are frozen in time.  This is why for a customer, commissioning a concrete floor is more like going to a concert than going to Walmart.  You have to abandon your consumerist conditioning a little to enjoy it.  It is not a mass-produced product for you to buy in a plastic clamshell package.  It is both an event frozen in time and a dynamic process.  

So we are going to have “imperfections”, and we know it going in.  The owner's response then leads our response.  If they are cool, the remarkable nuance starts to seem cool.  If sanding it out looks better, we just do that (often without a discussion).  If their Walmart conditioning is strong and they are freaked out - we then need to make the objectionable part the best part of the floor.  So, there are four responses to encountering them.  

1. Get excited.  The leaves that fell into your slab were a gift from nature.  The footprint from the man running the trowel machine is an artist's signature.  The raccoon that created a blob on the floor that won't react with acid stain now is reminding us that human's are not alone in this world.

2.   Cover it with a rug.  Honestly, concrete floors with no rugs tire the body and make for spaces with bad acoustics. The whole point of concrete floors can be rugs.  If you like carpet, and opt for rugs over polished concrete, you can clean them yourself with a pressure washer outside on the driveway much better than a professional cleaning company can clean carpet.  If your style changes, you can donate your rugs.  Rugs can be re-purposed indefinitely - Folks in Haiti would love the crappiest rug you can find.

3.  Sand it out.  Especially if the floor is sanded with a big machine anyway (we process every floor with diamond abrasives), we can often just sand it and fade it out.

4.)  Do something bold and intentional.  This is an article unto itself, and most of the best examples of this I can think of were never photographed.  The sad truth is, it is hard to balance doing work with this talking about work.  When we get really busy, the blogging drops off, except now I have been making a point of putting content out weekly regardless of how much work we have coming in.  Something is suffering and I will go fix it now.  Thank you for reading.