My basement floor looked like a cracked desert for 8 years

I finally poured a self-leveling concrete overlay over a long weekend last month and the difference is insane, the old floor had these deep fissures from when the house settled back in 2016. After 3 days of work and about $200 in materials, it looks like a brand new slab with no cracks at all. Has anyone else tried coating their concrete instead of tearing it out?

2 comments

2 Comments

thea24612d ago

$200 and a long weekend is a steal compared to what I’ve seen people do. I helped a buddy of mine who went the other way and tried acid staining his old cracked slab first (which looked awful) and then ended up chipping it out anyway. The thing nobody mentions is that self-leveler can hide a lot of sins but if your moisture barrier underneath is shot, you could trap water under that new layer and get efflorescence that peels the top coat off in a year. I’d run a plastic sheet test for 24 hours on the old floor before committing just to dodge that headache.

cora40012d ago

Yeah I did that plastic test once and ended up finding an old pet stain the previous owner tried to paint over.