Greenwood Village Exposed Aggregate

People come to us wanting a washed finish and start the conversation at the wrong end. They ask how deep the reveal should be, or which sealer makes the stone pop. Fair questions, both of them, and both downstream of the one that actually decides how the slab looks for the next thirty years.

Which stone is in there? Because you can wash the paste off a truck of ordinary mix and get a perfectly good gray-brown surface, or we can put specific rock on top by hand and get something nobody else on your street has. Those are two different jobs with two different price tags and two different pour days. On the size of slab most Greenwood Village properties need, the gap between them is worth understanding before anybody orders concrete.

Where the stone comes from, and who picked it

When we'd steer you toward washed stone, and when we wouldn't

Slope is the first argument for it. A washed surface has real texture standing proud of the paste, so a sloped walk down to a lower level in Greenwood Hills or a drive that pitches toward the street keeps its grip when there's a film of meltwater on it. Pool surrounds are the second argument, same reason, plus the surface hides the constant wet-dry cycling far better than a smooth trowel ever will.

It also hides dirt, which nobody puts in the brochure and everybody appreciates. Hard water spots, pine needles, the gray film that settles on everything in the dry months, all of it disappears into the texture. Compare that to a smooth finish in Cherry Hills Farm where every sprinkler overspray line shows for a week.

Where we'd point you elsewhere: covered patios with outdoor furniture, because chair legs and bare feet both dislike an aggressive reveal. Anywhere you plan to set a dining table. And any surface a snow blower has to cross regularly, since the auger housing rides the high stones and the stones tend to lose. On those we'd rather give you a light broom or a fine reveal and save the deep wash for the approach walk.

Pour day, the retarder, and the clock nobody controls

Exposing stone means taking the cement paste off the very top while the concrete underneath keeps setting. There are two ways in. Straight water and a broom works on a small slab if the crew reads the surface correctly, and it's entirely dependent on catching the concrete at exactly the right stiffness. Surface retarder is the grown-up version: we spray it on after finishing, it holds the top skin soft while everything below hardens, and the next morning we wash off a controlled depth with pressure. On anything large, retarder is what we use, because it turns a nervous afternoon into a scheduled morning.

The other half is what the sky is doing. Wind and low humidity at this elevation drive surface moisture off fast, and a slab that skins over early gets away from you. Storms are worse. A hard shower on retarded concrete washes the product unevenly and you'll see the difference in the reveal for good, so we tarp or we don't place.

Season runs late April into October. September is the best of it. Early spring works when the ground has thawed all the way, and we won't put concrete on frozen subgrade regardless of how nice the afternoon looks. Late fall pours get blankets and heated water, though we generally push seeded work to spring because the wash step wants a morning above freezing.

Settled before we order concrete

• Stone type and reveal depth chosen from a physical sample, not a screen
• Base compacted in lifts and proof rolled, because texture on top hides nothing underneath
• Number four rebar on chairs at roughly a two foot grid, tied and walked before the truck arrives
• Joint plan drawn, including where a saw cut will land relative to the seeded band
• Wash water route decided, with containment so slurry doesn't reach turf, beds, or the inlet
• Retarder, pressure washer, and enough hose staged the night before
• Sealer date on the calendar for a month out, so nobody seals a slab that hasn't finished curing