Hayes Residence

This is an acid-stained concrete countertop, in a kitchen, in Rochester Hills, Michigan, that Premier Veneers just refinished. The original installer of the countertop sprayed it with a water-based epoxy stain that failed, exactly what we warn about in this article: Acid Stained Concrete vs. Designer Metallic Epoxy Coatings. After just over 5 years, the coating was chipping and flaking all over.

We came in, and very carefully stripped the epoxy coating down to bare concrete. We then applied a dark brown acid stain to complement the stained finish of the cabinets, subsequently used a clear epoxy sealer over the acid stain to bring out the color of the stain, and finally a matte finish over the epoxy, to tone down its gloss.

The advantage to using acid stain, as opposed to epoxy is that if the finish should ever be damaged, such as flake or chip off in small sections, those areas can just be touched up with clear sealer to fix everything. With the original epoxy stain that the original installer used, that couldn’t be done. There was a completely different color under his stain, and it looked horrible.

The two photos above show the condition of the countertop coating at the beginning: a pale, dark coating with no antiquing or variation, and small chips everywhere. The two photos below show the condition of the countertop after stripping of the coating was complete: concrete varying in patches of gray and green.