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Choosing Your Quikrete Garage Floor

November 25th, 2009 Quigly Garret No comments

If you’ve been perusing the various Quikrete garage floor solutions, then you have likely noticed that there is no lack of options, and it’s sometimes hard to tell which will be best for your garage floors. Everyone’s situation is a little different, after all. In this article, we will look at the options so that you can see which would be best for your particular situation.

Quikrete High Gloss Sealer

This product can go straight on an untreated concrete garage floor, but it’s probably best used in situations where you want to protect the current treatment. Actually, it can even be used on aggregate, masonry, bricks, pavers, and slate. You will get a great, deep shine, and even better chemical stain protection if you put this over Quikrete garage floor paint. Used on untreated concrete, the protection is not nearly as good as with epoxy garage floor paint, but there will be some gain in resistance against staining and cracking. Considering it’s only half the price of epoxy, it is cheaper, and it is also a lot easier to install since it doesn’t have to be mixed. This may be the product for you if your only goal is to add some shine and a modicum of protection. If you have further needs, though, you will want to read on.

Etching Stain

First off, stain does not provide any protection. It is only used to give the concrete color. In fact, Quikrete states that their stain must be sealed with their Quikrete Garage Floor Stain Sealer. That being said, stain is pretty neat in that it does give a the concrete a very interesting and unusual color, and this particular product is a one coat affair, making it far simpler to apply than epoxy garage floor paint. Compared to their other garage flooring solutions, Quikrete’s stain is pretty pricey, and even after you add the sealant you’re not getting as much protection as with epoxy paint. Use this product only if all you want is an old world looking earth-tone color on your concrete. This cannot be used on concrete that already has any other type of treatment on it. Treated concrete will have to be stripped.

Clear Epoxy Coating By Quikrete

Quikrete states that, although this product can be used on a garage floor, it is intended to be used primarily indoors. However, if you decide to stain your concrete, this will be the best protection, indoors or out. With this product, you get a nice, low gloss look, and fairly good protection from chemicals and the elements. Unless you have stained concrete, or are offended at the idea of high gloss, the cheaper Quikrete garage floor high gloss sealer is probably a better option.

Epoxy Garage Floor Coating By Quikrete

This is the most comprehensive Quikrete garage floor option. It will give you the absolute best protection and great color. The kit includes color flakes and cleaner, and is actually fairly cheap. Unless you have a specific reason to look elsewhere, this should probably be your garage flooring solution. It should be mentioned, though, that epoxy garage floor coating can be the hardest coating to install, even if it is the most durable.

Learn more about Quikrete garage floorsolutions at Sweet Garage Floor

Temporary Decorations And Small Arrangements

November 25th, 2009 Keith Markensen No comments

Like cut-flower arrangements, making table-top compositions with vines and all kinds of containers offers a challenging chance to express originality and creative artistry. But behind the creativity there should always be planned design. Combinations of plants and containers should be in proportion and harmony with their setting and with each other. Colors and textures should either blend or contrast for good reason. Sizes and shapes should be in pleasing scale. It’s easy to see, at first glance, whether a table-top arrangement has made its appearance because the plant and container happened to be on hand, or whether the effect was artfully conceived.

There is infinite satisfaction in creating a composition that is both unique and decoratively sound. This is “flair,” the indefinable quality that distinguishes the competent from the outstanding, avoids the ordinary but acknowledges a debt to artistic discipline. Flair is the happy result when new plants and unusual containers are combined so they complement each other and fit nicely into the setting.

Vines for small compositions can be used like bouquets for temporary display – either bought just for the purpose, or brought in from the home greenhouse or other growing area, and returned before they fade. Containers come from everywhere and anywhere, and the ingenious decorator collects them as some people collect Dresden figurines. She keeps a selection of bronze, brass, ceramic, terra cotta, wood, and other standard containers – and also a motley assortment of bird cages, soup tureens, goblets, compotes, pitchers, bamboo vases, bean pots, glass and salad bowls, kettles, cookie jars, and straw hats from which she improvises containers to suit her arrangements. Some have natural wells for a pot to fit into, others can be adapted.

The following suggestions include only a few of the delightful dangling and creeping plants suitable for table-top or other small decorations.

Suspend a basket or wicker cage with plumy asparagus fern, or davallia, over the center of a large dining table.

Stuff the pocket in a piece of driftwood with sphagnum moss, and insert the roots of a small rhizomatous or trailing begonia, or an episcia. Feed the plant by soaking the moss with soluble fertilizer solution every ten days.

Hide the base of a stiff, upright plant with a soft creeper like helxine or pilea.

Below the knocker on the front door, hang a fishing creel with a bright-flowering pot of balcony petunias or put a mass cane plant in a pot on the floor.

For a party centerpiece, let the dainty schizocentron spill its red stems, tiny leaves, and magenta flowers over the edge of a straw bonnet.

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