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The porch project took 2 days, with an extra day for follow-up. The porch had been covered by outdoor carpet which we had removed the previous week. Covertech's first steps were to grind away old carpet glue, wash away the debris and with a patching compound, fill in miscellaneous divots in the porch surface and walls. After the patches were dry, Covertech troweled on an underlayer which had to dry as well.

Originally we had chosen a dark grey color from a color sample and were told the color would be highlighted later with a black spray. The underlayment dried with such a light tone that one of the techs recommended a different dark grey color and a different technique for covering the porch. That involved 'staining' the concrete cover rather than 'spraying' it. We could see the potential better appearance and we agreed. A second underlayment with the new grey color was troweled on and allowed to dry. When we commented that the new color was still too light, we were told that the staining step in the new process would solve the lightness.

 Next came using narrow tapes to build a design of our choice on the porch top and steps. An over-layer with a color of our choice (we chose the same proposed darker tone) was troweled on. Special effort was made to create hand-troweled 'swishes' on the surface to create a more natural look. When that dried, the tapes were pulled away to reveal the design and each portion of the design was hand-stained with a sponge or small brush. The 3-D effect of the stain on the hand-trowelling on the porch top was beautiful and justified the mid-stream decision to go with 'staining' over 'spraying'.

The techs stained individual bricks in the border design to try to achieve the dark slate grey tone we were after. When we gave feedback that even with staining, the top surface of the porch was still too light, we were told that when a sealer was applied, the color would 'pop out', so we moved on to that step.

The sealer dried to reveal the same lighter tone instead of the hoped-for darker tone and the project was done.

Three days later we did ask for a follow-up. The sincere attempt by the 2 techs to stain border bricks more darkly created a big range of tone from lightly-toned bricks to adjacent darker bricks. We revisited the project with Covertech's owner and asked to reduce the 'mottling' that we saw. He immediately scheduled the 2 techs to return. They ground away the darker tones on the individual bricks and re-layered all of them with the original overlay color to create a more consistent tone for the border.

Our take-away is that at each step everyone tried to create the best results possible. Yet, the proposed results didn't match what the material actually manifested. I think if we had to do it over again we would stop mid-stream and look at finished projects to confirm actual color results. Different concrete overlay materials and different sealers may dry differently. We would still choose Covertech because of their care in their handiwork at each step. We rated Quality an 'A' to reflect that pride, but chose a 'B' for Overall as a reflection of not achieving the results that were proposed (and we expected).

Added note: In the attached photos, you can see how dark the sealer looks when it is wet. When it dried, it was closer to the not-sealed-yet portions of the porch.

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