Pyrafloor polished concrete was installed in this busy little café in the heart of Toowoomba. The Bakery Duck owners chose polished concrete flooring as their floor of choice to stay as a heavy duty flooring system that will be easy to maintain both front and back of house.
Polished concrete was also chosen to help set the scene for a creative, quirky café vibe that turns out delicious pastries.
The previous floors was concrete coating from the original butcher’s shop at the front that then transformed into a retail store with vinyl floor coverings – both of which were removed to give a clean consistent polished concrete floor finish.
In a busy café like this that turns out in excess of 200 + coffees a day the floor needed to stand up as stain and slip resistant to ensure easy clean-up of spills. The floor also gets a lot of foot traffic from customers especially on weekends who line up out the door to get their favourite pastry.
This Cafe project is a beautiful representation of bringing an old building and old concrete to life again.
This space was most recently used as a retail space with floor coverings, however at some stage in the building’s life it was home to a butcher shop. This is an important part of the history of this building, and it is also an important part of what made up the composition of the concrete that was to be polished.
Once the floor coverings were removed, it exposed worn, tired floor with concrete that had been in place for many years, and had been poured over different stages of the building’s life.
During the time in which this building served as a butcher shop it appears to have had a serving and preparation area, which would have been exposed to larger amounts of water on a regular basis. This exposure to water over time changed the density of the top layer of concrete. This softened the concrete in that particular area, making the polishing process more difficult due to the varying densities that were present across the existing concrete floor.
The initial grinding of this concrete floor removed any high areas, leveling and flattening the surface. Grinding the top layer of the concrete uncovered random areas of exposed aggregate and other areas with no stone exposure which is also known as Minimal Exposure.
This exposed concrete was then taken through the intricate process of grouting to fill pin holes and imperfections as well as densification which hardens the concrete’s surface. The concrete floor was then polished to a Matte Finish, and finished with two coats of penetrating sealer making it stain and slip resistant.
The end product is a beautiful, stain and slip resistant, low maintenance polished concrete floor that is hard wearing for the large volume of customers that will come and go from this Cafe on a daily basis.
This polished concrete floor was polished using the Pyrafloor Polishing System. This system is a process which hardens and protects and seals the concrete floor for durability, long lasting, low maintenance space which is slip resistant and stain resistant.
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