Arvada Exposed Aggregate Concrete

Here's what nobody tells you at the sample board. Washed stone is a surface you interact with in small ways every single day, and the chip in your hand is four inches across. Stand on the real thing in socks. Roll a wheelbarrow over it. Set a chair leg down and drag it back. Those three moves tell you more than any photograph will.

We pour exposed aggregate all over Arvada: patios, front walks, pool surrounds, and the strip between a driveway and a side gate. It's the toughest-wearing decorative finish we install and it hides more than any other. It also has a personality, and part of our job is making sure you know what that personality is before the truck shows up rather than the first weekend you use the thing.

Bare feet, dog nails, and chair legs

Bare feet first, since that's the question we get most. A light wash over pea gravel is comfortable for adults and perfectly fine for a barefoot trip to the hose bib. A heavy wash over larger river stone is not somewhere anybody wants to stand around in bare feet, and if you're thinking pool surround or hot tub pad, that matters more than the look does. We'd sooner talk you into a lighter exposure than have you buy sandals for your own patio.

Dogs love it and it loves them back. Nails find grip instead of skating, the texture doesn't hold odor the way sand-jointed pavers do, and a hose knocks everything loose. Chairs are the honest tradeoff. Thin metal legs will find the valleys between stones and rock a little, so if a patio is going to carry a dining table, we'll often pour a smoother band under the table area or push you toward a lighter exposure across the whole surface.

Snow, hose water, and the things that land on it

Winter is where this finish earns most of its reputation. A shovel rides across the tops of the stones instead of digging in, and the texture keeps its bite after a melt-and-refreeze that would turn a hard-troweled surface into a skating rink. That's exactly why we like it for the north-facing walks in West Woods and Leyden Rock, where the sun never reaches and a thin glaze can sit for days.

Cleaning gear, and what we'd let near washed stone

How a wash pour runs, in the order it happens

• Place, screed, and float like any slab, then wait for it to start stiffening
• Spray surface retarder over the top so the paste up high stays soft while the concrete below sets
• Watch the clock and the sky, because heat, wind, and the mix all move the window
• Cut control joints the same day, once the surface is firm enough to hold a clean edge
• Wash with hose and brush starting at the high side, taking paste off until stone shows evenly
• Direct slurry away from beds and inlets, then let the slab cure out undisturbed
• Come back after the cure and rinse the haze off before any sealer goes near it

The wash window, and when we book this work

Everything about this finish hangs on a window that opens once and closes on its own schedule. Go early and stone rolls out of the slab. Go late and you're fighting hardened paste with a pressure washer, which never looks right afterward. On a mild spring morning that window is generous. On a hot dry afternoon with wind moving, it can slam shut inside an hour, which is why we start these pours early and staff them heavier than a broom finish.

Practically, we run washed work from late April into October, with September the easiest stretch of the year to get right. We won't do them in freezing weather, because the slab has to reach some strength before it takes a hose and a brush, and a young washed surface that freezes gives up stone. New builds out in Candelas and Whisper Creek usually get theirs in the pour season right after landscaping goes in. Around Olde Town it's more often a replacement, where we're matching the scale of an older walk on a tighter lot.