Artistic Concrete Coatings

My wife and I hired Paul from KC Artistic Concrete to refinish our concrete basement floors during a remodel last year. At first, we were both impressed with Paul’s experience, photos of finished work, and his prompt service. For around $8,000, he did an epoxy floor in our gym, sealed the utility rooms, and did a marble-type epoxy floor in the main living space. He even threw in a free sealing of our limestone bar since that wasn’t done by the previous owners. His crew was very timely and professional during installation. Unfortunately, the color placed in the gym was wrong - ending up brown instead of blue. To Paul’s credit, he refinished the floor at no cost, I think because we had picked the color number directly off of the company’s website and the paint supplier had changed numbers without notification. This was a minor annoyance, but since it was redone to our satisfaction, no harm done. However, the reason for this lousy review has to do with the main living space. After the floor was done, it was the most beautiful concrete finish I’d ever seen. It was like a single piece of glass-smooth grey and white marble with some other colors mixed in for accents. Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever had in a house. About 2 weeks later, we started to notice some bubbling in the paint coating. Much to our dismay, the entire floor began bubbling, making that glass smooth surface noticeably rough to look at and to walk on. We had Paul come back to see what had happened and the bubbles turned out to be water underneath the slab, pushing up the coating from below. If you didn’t see it immediately after it was done, you probably wouldn’t notice until we point it out to you, but we certainly notice. It is ugly now and needs to be completely redone. Therein lies the problem. Paul assured us that he uses “the best products” to seal the basement and offered us a 10-year warranty. As it turns out, I didn’t read it carefully enough as it states that “Not responsible for water damage from leaking pipes, receptacles, or slab moisture transmission and/or hydrostatic pressure appearing on this project.” What the warranty actually covers is beyond me as I specifically hired him to seal the basement from moisture and that wasn’t actually covered. Shame on me for not reading carefully and trusting in a handshake. Anyway, we had another contractor look at the floor and the second opinion revealed that the slab should have been tested for moisture content and the products used by Paul should have been selected based on that information. As Paul didn’t do that, I felt that he should fix the floor. When contacted, he stated “I can’t and won’t absorb the entire cost” of refinishing the floor. So, in order to get our floor back to presentable condition, we would have to pay several thousand more for someone that didn’t do his homework. No thank you. So, your experience may vary here, but if you are trying to finish a concrete slab indoors, I would recommend getting a bid from someone that knows how to seal out moisture before shelling out good money to KC Artistic Concrete.