Oooooo

What colors did you use? What epoxy are you putting over that to protect it? What floor protection are you doing now to keep all of the drywall dust and Philistines leadfoots from ruining it?

Awesome! Congratulations on doing this DIY.

I had to bring in a contractor from another state to acid stain our basement. Local contractors wanted to use water based stain and not bother with the (incredibly beautiful!) chemical reaction process. Ours looks similar to yours, we used Kemiko “cola” hydrochloric acid. We protected it with ram board for the remainder of construction.

"The prep work was extensive and it was a lot more work than I anticipated..."

They never show this part on HGTV! Prep is most of the work.

It does look pretty cool. Nice work!

As others have asked, what is your long-term protective surface going to be? Will you be applying an epoxy or will you be using wax?

A beautiful acid stain (yours is STUNNING) still requires some sort of protection or it will stain and etch as it ages. If you are OK with the stains (from water, oil, wine, tomato sauce, ketchup, mustard, dog drool, etc) then you won't need a top coat to protect it.

If you want to keep this look for as long as possible you will need to investigate what type of protection you can use over top.

It really depends on the particular concrete mixture too, and what additives may have been applied. Yes, you probably want to seal it with an epoxy, but depending on the mix design it might not be nearly as fragile and finicky as someone else’s,

The brown stain with acid finish is lovely and one we are considering in our own home when we build :)

Hi! I got this from Home Depot. It is called Eagle stain in rustic. I wanted Kemiko but had a lot of trouble finding a local dealer. We have already put 2 coats of a solvent based, top coating sealant/protectant on it. We will also put a wax or similar product on as a sort of “sacrificial” top coat. For now, we are going to let it cure a couple more days and then put rosin paper on it to protect it during the spray foam, HVAC, drywall, and paint.

Sheila - ours Is similar but the sealer was acrylic based, not solvent-based (we were living in the house on the upper floors while basement was being refinished). The sacrificial wax is to protect the sealer, we used a few coats at first, now just reapply occasionally esp. to the high traffic areas. It‘s been 4 or 5 years of heavy use, we don’t do anything special to protect it except using felt pads on furniture since the wax scratches easily.