We are a concrete contractor in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and polished floors are a steady part of what we do. A polished floor starts with a slab you already own, in a basement, a garage, a workshop, a kitchen. We grind it and bring it up through finer passes until the surface carries its own shine. Nothing gets laid on top. There is no coating to peel or yellow in a few years. What you walk on is the concrete itself, which is why a floor done properly tends to outlast the rest of the room.
Most houses here date to around 1987, the median build year across a city of 30,954, and slabs of that age deserve a close look before anyone talks about polishing them. Some are flat, dense and ready to go. Others carry hairline cracks, old tile adhesive, carpet tack strip holes, or a rough patch where someone opened the floor for a plumbing repair. We check the slab first. If it will not hold a polish, we say so, and we tell you what would work in that room instead.
Floors are not the whole of our work. We pour driveways, sidewalk runs, patios, steps and stamped concrete for anyone who wants a pattern rather than a broom finish, and the same crew handles a garage floor in Lawrenceville or a job out toward Suwanee. Working in flatwork every week is part of why we read an existing slab well. You learn what a good pour looks like by making them. Call for a free estimate on the floor and we will talk through what is actually there.
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Polished concrete starts with the slab you already have. We grind the surface with diamond tooling in successive passes, cutting through old adhesive, paint and surface laitance until the floor runs flat and the aggregate reads the way you want it: cream, salt and pepper, or full exposed aggregate. A densifier soaks in and hardens the concrete, then finer grits bring up the sheen. A concrete contractor should tell you what the slab will do before grinding, not after.
What goes wrong is usually in the slab, not the polish. Cracks, cold joints and old patches stay visible under gloss, and heavy troweling can leave soft spots that take shine unevenly. We fill cracks with semi-rigid joint filler and map problem areas first. Garage floors, shops and commercial concrete get the same prep. If a floor will not hold a polish, we say so and talk about coatings or stamped concrete outside instead.
We polish concrete floors in Lawrenceville and the towns around it, Snellville, Suwanee, Duluth and Sugar Hill, and through the rest of metro Atlanta on the same terms everywhere. Most of what we grind is already in the ground: a garage slab, a basement, a shop floor, a kitchen that has carried tile through two owners. Polishing turns that slab into the finished surface instead of a base for something else. It stays concrete. It just gets flat, closed and hard on top.
The median home in Lawrenceville was built in 1987, and that shapes what we find once the carpet and tile come up. Slabs from that period were poured to carry a house, not to be looked at, so a surface can be uneven, stained with old adhesive, or scarred where a wall once stood. Some of them polish beautifully. We grind a test patch first, take our reading off that, and say what the floor will actually look like before anyone commits to it.
Trouble usually shows up in the first pass. Trenches cut for plumbing get patched with material that never quite matches, and that patch stays visible no matter how fine we take the polish. Grind too deep and the slab opens into exposed aggregate whether you wanted that look or not. Old cracks move again. Wire mesh that sank to the bottom of the pour does nothing for the surface. None of it is fatal, but it decides how far the finish can go.
Getting one right is mostly patience and sequence: joints filled, cracks cut and repaired, densifier worked in, then every grit taken all the way through before the next one starts. Dye goes down when you want colored concrete instead of the gray that is already sitting there. We do floors in houses, and commercial concrete for shops and small retail spaces, by the same order of steps. Done that way, a floor takes furniture, dogs and daily traffic with no coating to peel off later. Call for a free estimate.
We walk the area with you and look at what is already there: the old slab, how water moves across the yard, where downspouts empty, and how far a truck can back in. Grade matters more than most people expect, since a driveway that drains toward the garage will keep doing that no matter how good the new concrete is. We measure, note thickness, and check whether the subgrade is soil or fill.
You get the scope in writing: square footage, slab thickness, reinforcement (rebar or wire mesh), finish, joint layout, and how we handle the tear-out debris. If a permit applies to the work, we handle that paperwork before anything gets broken up. Reading the estimate carefully is worth your time. It is the document that settles what is included and what is not once the crew shows up.
Old concrete comes out in sections and goes on the truck. Then the real work starts. We cut the subgrade to depth, remove soft spots, and bring in graded base stone, compacted in lifts with a plate compactor or roller. Skipping compaction is the single most common cause of cracked driveways and settled sidewalks. A slab is only as flat and as stable as the ground holding it up.
Forms get set to line and grade, staked tight so nothing bows under the weight of wet concrete. Rebar or wire mesh sits on chairs in the middle of the slab, not on the ground where it does nothing. Concrete installation happens in one continuous pour where we can, placed, screeded and bull floated before it starts to set. Cold joints in the middle of a concrete driveway are avoidable.
Finish depends on what you picked: broom texture for grip on sidewalks and driveways, stamped and colored patterns for patios, or exposed aggregate. Control joints get cut early, before shrinkage picks its own crack line. Curing runs several days, and we tell you when to walk it and when to drive it. Last, we walk the finished work with you and go over sealing and what to avoid.
Most of the price is settled before we ever start grinding, by the slab already under your feet. A floor poured around 1987 under carpet behaves differently than one poured last year. We look at flatness, cracking, what is bonded to the top, and how the machines get into the room.
| What changes the price | Which way | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A slab that is flat and bare already | costs less | Less grinding to reach a level surface, fewer passes before polishing |
| Carpet glue, vinyl adhesive or thinset still down | costs more | Every bit has to come off before the first cut, and old adhesive fights back |
| Cracks, patches and old control joints | costs more | These get cleaned, filled and cut in, and they show in the finished floor |
| A new slab poured for the floor | costs more | Thickness, rebar or wire mesh, and cure time are all added to the job |
| Stairs, narrow doorways or no truck access to the room | costs more | Grinders and dust collection get carried in, and the slurry gets carried out |
| Ground sloping toward the building, or moisture coming up through the slab | costs more | Damp concrete takes different prep, and the water source gets addressed first |
| How much aggregate you want showing | costs more | A deep exposed aggregate look means cutting further into the slab |
| Closets, thresholds and tight edge work | costs more | Edges are hand ground, and a chopped up floor plan has a lot of them |
Compare bids on grit sequence, densifier, how far the aggregate is exposed, and whether prep and removal are inside the number or added later. If new concrete is part of it, ask who pulls the permit with the City of Lawrenceville.
Yes, it is simple: dust mop it, then damp mop with a neutral cleaner and clean water. Skip anything acidic, and skip the harsh degreasers that eat the surface over time. Grit is what dulls a polished floor, so walk-off mats at the doors do more for the finish than any product you buy. Periodic burnishing brings the sheen back up.
Yes, to a degree. Polishing takes off the top layer and opens up what the slab already holds: hairline cracks, old control joints, patches from a plumbing repair. We can fill and color-match cracks before the final passes, and joints get a semi-rigid filler. The result reads as a finished floor with history in it, not a floor with defects. Some clients want that character.
Yes. A polished slab handles pallet jacks, rolling toolboxes and jack stands without chipping the way a coating does, and it will not peel under a hot tire. The densifier hardens the surface so it sheds oil rather than drinking it. Light bounces off it, which usually means a brighter shop on the same fixtures. It is a common choice for garages and small warehouses.
That depends on how far up the grit sequence we go. Stopping around an 800 grit gives you a satin finish, low sheen, easy to live with. Carrying it through 1500 and 3000 produces the mirror look you see in showrooms. Higher gloss shows footprints and dust sooner. In a house built in the 1980s, we usually land in the middle.
Most residential floors run a few days from grind to final burnish. Square footage drives it, but so does the slab: a floor with adhesive, old tile mastic or carpet glue needs a mechanical removal pass before polishing starts. Crack repair and joint fill add time. Larger commercial concrete jobs get scheduled in sections so part of the space stays usable.
Most slabs can be polished. We look at flatness, the depth and pattern of cracking, and whether the surface is soft or spalling from years under a covering. A slab that heaves at the joints or has structural cracking will need concrete work before anything else. When a floor is too far gone, we say so and price the replacement instead of polishing over a problem.