An Exposed Aggregate Concrete Patio

Bam.  There it is.

Simple. Elegant. Affordable. Easy.  Ok, well, all those things are true except the last part. The backstory: After many conversations over materials (slate, flagstone pavers, etc) we settled on concrete as our material. It's really the most flexible option. And it's totally cheap. We actually started looking at sidewalks: They're kind of ubiquitous and you don't really notice them most of the time, but they're kind of cool-looking (at least the old ones are). They're modern, rectangular, sleek. We walked around taking pictures of patches of sidewalks we like.

The pic on the top right we liked best. Nearly white cement, and dark exposed aggregate.  It turns out that no concrete trucks in Philly will mix up white cement at any reasonable cost, so we decided to do it ourselves.  We borrowed a friend's cement mixer, and ordered deliveries of stone, sand and cement.  Again, it turned out that no place sold the combination of white sand and dark stone, so we had to get two separate deliveries. 

I think at this point we were glad that we haven't seeded grass yet.  It would have gotten destroyed.

For stuff like this we nearly always call on a hand from Victor Marin, our next-door neighbor.  When the project is big, he sometimes brings one of his many relatives. This time we had Victor's brother Jose Luis working with us. (Not to be confused with Victor's nephew Jose Luis)

A little help from our friendsl: BC Camplight, Rock n Roller extraordinaire shows up the first morning to move some heavy stuff.  He says he likes the workout. If I meet more people that say stuff like that, I'm going to start a free gym. Rock and Roll Concrete Aerobics. Just for the record, he did not make it to the 7am start on Sunday morning.

Turns out white cement happens to be double the cost of regular (grey) cement. So, we use 75% regular cement and white on just the last couple inches on top.

Victor, our resident concrete expert

To get the exposed aggregate look, you have to wash the top layer off while the cement is hardening.  Sponges proved to be the best tool for that.

We did it in 1/3s. By the last 3rd, we had it down. The first 1/3 is still a little milky. We got started late and ended up washing it in the dark.  We were too tired to get up at 10pm and sweep it again.  We'll get it looking all good soon. 

We had a little left over mix so we made a much-needed step to our house.