Do It Yourself ! How To Polish Concrete for beginners

Polishing concrete begins with checking the hardness of the concrete using a hardness tester. Preforming a hardness test will help you select the correct pads and materials to grind the concrete.

Once you’ve preformed the hardness test and have accumulated the materials you’ll next need to clean the concrete surface. This will remove small debris from that surface which can get caught in-between the materials and cause scaring and etching in the stone.

Our next step involves inspecting the concrete for cracks and filling the crevices with concrete fillers such as the spartacote fast fix.

After you have completed filling the concrete utilize a floor grinder equipped with diamond grinding discs or polishing pads for sanding concrete to grind the floor. Grinding concrete requires more passes then traditional polishing but the right grinder can limit this number of passes drastically. After every pass be sure to vacuum any debris produced. 

Also be sure to apply a Densifier in-between passes to reduce dusting and fill in pours you might have in the concrete.

From there, switch to a finer disc and pass over the entire floor again, the exact number of passes you make will depend on the hardness of your concrete. In, general after the initial pass, you can use the 80 grit size, then 150, 200, and possibly 400.

For your final grind use a 1500 or 3000 grit polishing pad to achieve your desired gloss appearance. You can then apply a sealer to maintain the gloss and protect your shiny new floor from stains.