‘Venetian Plaster’ Style Floors
The ‘Venetian Plaster’ effect is a cementitious coating that is extremely durable and can be customized with unique patterns to enhance the appearance of a home or commercial building. Venetian plaster can resemble the appearance of marble and can be applied either smooth or with a slight texture. The material can be applied to nearly any interior floor and is suitable for high traffic locations.
The floor can be hand-troweled, buffed, and completed in just a few days. A Venetian plaster floor can be patched, re-buffed, or completely redone in the future, if the owner so chooses.
The process starts by grinding the concrete floor in order to remove contaminants, smooth out the surface, and abrade the surface to accept an overlay. After thoroughly cleaning the floor with acid and alkali, one or two thin coats of thinset are applied. Once dry, two additional coats of fine cement micro topping are applied using a steel trowel. The trowel technique leaves fine clatter marks and burnishing effect.
After 24 hours, the floor is sanded and burnished before sealing with a water-based epoxy sealer. The result is a totally unique and personalized floor that is hard-wearing and attractive.
The surface coat can be customized to suit the homeowner’s taste by varying the colors and hue of the layers, the trowel technique, and the level of burnishing.
We recently completed a concrete overlay floor in the Venetian plaster style. The existing floor had a very light color, marked easily, and did not match the rest of the house. Some repairs had been made that did not match the rest of the floor.
The first step was to prepare the existing floor to accept the new material. We sanded the floor with screens and green pads on a buffing machine to scuff it up so that the new material would adhere to it. We prepared the edges with sheet rock screens by hand. Next we used a magic trowel to coat the floor with Elite Crete Thinfinish with charcoal gray pigment.
The following day we used a steel trowel to apply the first coat of Elite Crete Microfinish with charcoal gray pigment. This kept the material tight to the surface and induced chatter marks.
On the third day, we lightly sanded the floor with a buffer and green pad. We could have also used a 220 screen. Next we used a steel trowel to coat the floor with a second coat of Microfinish with dark gray color pigment.
On the fourth day, we sanded the floor again, removed the masking tape, and tidied up the edges. Then we used a magic trowel and a 9-inch roller to coat the floor with Elite Crete PT-3 water-based epoxy.
On the final day, we removed any burrs by hand and applied another coat of PT-3 epoxy. The end result was a beautiful, shiny, hard-wearing floor with a unique hand-troweled finish.