Katella Anaheim Concrete pours interior floors meant to stay bare, polished, stained or sealed, and flat enough that nothing has to hide them. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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Floor as finish
A floor that will be seen is poured differently from a floor that will be covered. Under tile or plank a slab only has to be flat and dry. Left bare it also has to be dense enough to take a polish, jointed where a line looks intended, and finished without the burn marks and ridges a covering forgives. So the mix is ordered denser, the trowel goes over it more times, and the saw cuts are drawn on a plan before the truck is booked. What a covering would hide is the whole job.
Katella Anaheim Concrete was opened in 2016 by Omar Espinoza, after 22 years on other crews, and he is the one on the trowel at every floor pour. The demand here comes from two directions. Restaurant and shop tenants around the Packing District and Center Street want the bare polished floor those buildings made the local look, and owners of single-story tract houses on the flat want a ground floor that stays cool through August and never has to be relaid.
Floors are placed to the California Residential Code under a CSLB C-8 concrete license, with liability insurance on every job. A new slab inside an existing room is usually exempt work, but a garage or a porch becoming living space is a change of use, drawn and filed with the city's Building Division before the old floor comes out. Every bare floor we finish is handed over with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Signs it is time
Plank relaid twice, tile that pops in one corner, carpet that smells after a wet winter. Each is the covering failing rather than the slab, and the cause is usually damp the slab was never sheeted against. A floor with no glue and no backing has nothing for that damp to lift.
Grinding an old floor only works if there is one floor to grind. A slab cut for a repipe, patched where a wall came out and topped over a step polishes up as a map of every repair. Once the patches cover more than a corner, a new pour reads as one floor and the old one never will.
A new room poured beside a 1960s slab lands at a different level and color, and under carpet that never matters. Left bare, the seam is the first thing anyone sees. When the whole floor is meant to show, the old part is ground and stained to match or the pour runs through both.
A workshop floor that leaves gray dust on the stock was troweled soft and never sealed, and every pallet wears more off it. A polished floor stops dusting because the surface is densified not painted, so a forklift has nothing to peel. It is the last sign before the slab goes.
In every floor
Eight things are in every interior floor at no separate line, each there because the floor will be looked at rather than covered. A sheet that stops damp blooming through the finish, a mix dense enough to polish, and joints placed where a line was meant to be.
Tile, mastic, plank or a failed slab is broken out and carried through the house to the truck, and the room is left swept down to the ground.
One core through the old slab before the figure is written shows its depth, whether a sheet was ever laid, and what the new floor will bear on.
Compacted base, then a 15 mil vapor retarder lapped and taped, laid because a bare finish shows every bloom of damp that comes up through it.
A low-water 4,000 psi mix with a small, even aggregate, because a polish opens the surface and the stone in it becomes the pattern you see.
Welded mesh or fiber through the slab, and rebar doweled into any old concrete it meets, so the seam does not open into a line across the finish.
Saw cuts set out on the plan to land under walls and along the lines of the room, so the joints read as intended rather than as cracks.
Power troweled to a hard face, then ground, densified and polished, or stained and sealed once cured, in the room and with dust extraction running.
We check the floor with you under a raking light against the estimate, level, finish and joints, and hand over the written guarantee.
Four finishes
Four ways to leave a new floor bare, set against the room it goes in and what it asks of you afterward. The slab, the sheet and the steel are the same under all four, so the table is only about the face of the floor.
| Option | Suits | Looks like | Kept up by | Back in use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Troweled and sealed | A garage, shop or utility room | Even gray with a light sheen | A sealer coat as the sheen dulls | 7 days for foot traffic |
| Ground and polished | A living room, shop or unit floor | Stone showing through a soft gloss | Washing only, no sealer to renew | 28 days, then the grind |
| Acid stained and sealed | A room wanting warmth and color | Mottled browns and grays, no two alike | Sealer renewed as it wears | Stained at 28 days, sealed after |
| Polished overlay | An old slab too patched to grind | One even face over the repairs | Washing, resealed if a stain sets | Foot traffic the next day |
Troweled and sealed costs least to finish and asks for the most resealing; a full polish costs most on the day and is then washed with water for decades.
Why it suits
Most houses on the flat of this city are single stories on a slab, and their summer afternoons run into the nineties. A floor that is the concrete stays cool underfoot and never has to be relaid.
The slab those houses stand on was poured with the tract, and the covering on it has been changed three or four times since. Each change was a bet on the same slab, glue, backing and grout sitting on concrete cast straight onto river sand, with ground damp given fifty years to find the glue. A bare floor takes that bet off the table. Damp that reaches a polished surface evaporates from it, which makes the slab the one finish that suits an unsheeted house here.
The other half of the demand is commercial. The Packing District and Center Street have made the bare polished floor the look of a restaurant or shop here, and a tenant fitting one out wants a floor that takes a scrub, a cart and a hundred covers a night and leaves nothing to replace. Those floors go down on the same sheet and mix as a house floor and are ground harder. Where an old floor must be cut to meet one, concrete cutting is ours.
Core to polish
Five stages, and the person who cores the old floor is the one on the trowel at the pour. A polish or a stain waits for the slab to cure, so the room is out of use for longer than the pour takes, and the dates are set around that.
Omar Espinoza measures the room, cores the old slab to see its depth and what is under it, and takes levels off each threshold the floor must meet.
You pick the finish from samples in the room, settle the joint layout on a drawing and take a date. A change of use is filed with the city first.
The old floor is broken out and carried through the house, soft ground is dug and replaced with base, and the sheet is laid and taped up the walls.
Concrete is pumped in through a door or window, screeded to the thresholds, troweled to a hard face and kept damp under sheeting for seven days.
At 28 days the floor is ground and polished or stained and sealed, the dust extracted as it goes, and checked with you under a raking light.
Behind the number
The room's size starts the figure and the finish ends it. One slab can be troweled and sealed in a day or ground through four grits over three, which is why nothing is quoted from a photograph. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
Access sets it. Concrete carried or pumped through the house, an old covering to strip, and a slab to break out and carry back out the same way.
A change of use is drawn and filed, the floor built up to the house level over base and a sheet, and the doorway threshold cast into the pour.
Square footage and the loads on it. A dense-mix slab ground flat across a tenancy, with drains, curbs and joints set to the fit-out drawings.
A polish is graded by how far the grind goes and how much stone shows, a stain adds its own sealing days, and a troweled floor is the least work.
The visit and the written figure cost nothing, and the call to arrange the visit comes within 1 business day. (657) 220-6196 or send us a message.
Send the form or ring, and someone calls back within 1 business day to fix a time. Omar Espinoza measures the room, cores the old floor, lays the finish samples out for you and writes the figure there, with nothing owed for any of it.
Floors we poured
Three reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB, each about a floor poured to stay bare rather than a slab under tile, and each naming the room and the finish that went on it.
“Our living room and kitchen in West Anaheim had plank that lifted every winter. Omar cored the slab, showed us there was nothing under it, and poured a new floor on a sheet and polished it. Two summers on it is cool and dry and there is nothing left to peel.”
“We converted the garage into a studio for my mother. The floor was built up to the house level over a sheet, stained brown and sealed, and the threshold was cast level with the hall. The city inspector passed the slab on the first visit and it looks like it was always part of the house.”
“Our unit off La Palma Avenue had a floor that dusted onto every pallet. The old slab came out in a week and the new one was ground and hardened, and now a forklift and a scrubber go over it every night and it only gets shinier. No dust on the stock since.”
Before you book
What moves the figure on a floor that will be seen, how long the room is out of use, what the city asks for, and what is guaranteed once the polish is on, answered for a room in this city.
The grinding, and only the grinding. The slab, the sheet and the steel are the same whichever finish is chosen, so the difference between the four options is how many passes go over the cured surface. A troweled floor takes one coat of sealer. A polish takes a grinder through four or more grits, a densifier between them and a burnish, over three days. A stain sits between the two, and each is its own line.
About five weeks for a polish, and most of that is waiting. The break-out, base and pour take three or four days for a room, then the slab cures for 28 days before a grinder can go over it without tearing the surface, and the grind and polish take two or three more. A troweled and sealed floor is walked on after seven days. Plan a polish for a room you can do without for a month.
Yes, whatever is on it. Tile and mortar, plank and its glue, carpet, tack strip and mastic, and the old slab itself if it is coming out, are all broken up, carried through the house and hauled, and the figure says so line by line. What sits outside it is named at the visit rather than added later, such as a drain line found broken under the floor, or asbestos in black mastic under 1960s tile.
Not if the room stays a room. Replacing the slab under an existing room is a like-for-like repair and the Residential Code does not ask for a permit for it. The moment the room changes what it is, a garage becoming a bedroom or a porch being enclosed, the conversion is permitted and the floor is inspected as part of it, sheet, steel and depth before the pour. State law lets a garage become a unit.
Often for the access, rarely for the floor. A policy here usually pays to find the leak and to open the slab to reach it, and to put back the covering the water ruined, but a slab that was never sheeted and has been damp for years is wear rather than a sudden loss. Photograph the floor before anything is lifted, get the plumber's report in writing, and ask your carrier what the access claim covers before you book.
How it was built and finished. The depth, the sheet, the steel, the flatness and the finish, all printed on the estimate before you sign, are covered by a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built. Hairline crazing in a polish, a stain that reads differently from the sample, and wear from a cart or chair leg sit outside it. Where the fault is in the build we come back and put it right.
A 4,000 psi mix with a low water content and a small, even stone, because the stone is what shows once the surface is ground. Under it a 15 mil vapor retarder, lapped and taped. Through it welded mesh or a fiber dose. On it a lithium silicate densifier for a polish, a water-based acid stain for color, and a penetrating sealer rather than a film, so nothing sits on the floor to peel. All named on the estimate.
Out of the room, not out of the house. The crew needs the room emptied to the walls, a clear path to a door or window for the pump line, water and power, and the room shut off while the dust extraction runs on the grind. If it is a kitchen or the only bathroom, say so at the visit and the pour is planned in two halves so one side is always walkable. A polish is loud for two days, and most people go out for those.
Towns we pour in
The eight nearest towns on the list, with the straight-line distance from the office on West Katella Avenue beside each. Every floor is cored and measured at the property before a figure is written.
Four jobs that come up with an interior floor, either before it can be poured or once it is down, done by the same crew and itemized on the one written estimate.
The bay slab left as a garage, repoured level and sealed against tire marks and oil.
The old slab sawn back to a straight line where a new floor has to meet it flush.
A new slab for an addition or a unit, poured with its floor face finished in one go.
Stem walls and footings for a room being added, poured before its floor goes in.
Call or send the form and you hear back within 1 business day. Say which room it is, what is on the floor now and which finish you have in mind, and the visit can be booked for a day inside the same week.