Stamped concrete services in Kirkland WA - a patterned slab sealed to bring out its color

Most people call because a plain patio looks tired, an old stamped surface has gone chalky and drinks up the rain, or they want a driveway or a concrete patio with more character than bare gray. The price moves with how big the area is, how busy the pattern and design get, whether an old slab has to come out first and how much base work the ground needs. The schedule turns on the cure, since the slab has to harden before it's sealed and the weather stretches or shortens that wait, and on whether a permit is needed. I'll give you your own figure and timeline after I come out and look at the spot.

I start by walking the spot with you and checking where the water runs, because a slab that falls toward the house sends rain right back at your foundation. Then we dig out to firm ground and pack a gravel base over the subgrade, the dirt the slab sits on, since no pattern can hide a slab that settles. That base is the part you'll never see and the first thing people want to trim from a budget, and it's the last place I'd save money, because a pretty surface on a soft base just cracks in a nicer pattern. We set forms, add rebar, steel bars that help hold the slab together, and pour early in the day so the top doesn't dry too fast and end up weak and dusty. We stamp while the concrete is still soft enough to take the pattern, and we cut control joints, planned grooves that give the slab a place to crack where you won't notice, before it picks its own spot. Concrete can still crack, and the joints are how we keep it neat. With stamped work the sealer matters as much as the pattern, so we let the slab cure, the slow hardening that gives it strength, before any sealer goes on, keep each coat light, and I'll show you what worn sealer looks like so you can tell when it's time to reseal.

Stamped work usually ties into plain concrete around it. A stamped patio often meets the house by way of a broom-finished walk, the brushed texture that gives shoes some grip, and we pour those through our concrete sidewalk building work so the edges and heights line up. If you're redoing a driveway with a stamped apron or border, the garage can get new garage floor concrete during the same project, so the lip at the door comes out even.

Whether your stamped driveway needs a permit is the city's call, and it isn't settled until we know your address. Kirkland Public Works issues permits for driveway replacement and for work in the right of way, the public strip along the street, and the city's permit rules exempt driveways 30 inches or less above grade only outside flood hazard, wetland, steep slope, shoreline and other critical areas. A Parcel Report from the city's Property Search Tool shows whether any of those apply to your lot. When a job needs a permit, I'll tell you at the estimate, and we'll take care of the application with the city or walk you through it so you know where it stands.

Bigger projects bring in a stormwater rule. In Kirkland, development projects that create more than 2,000 square feet of new or replaced hard surface have to look at low impact development, ways of letting rain soak in on site, and amend the soil in all landscaped areas, so when a stamped driveway and patio go in together I measure all of it at the estimate. We're based in Kirkland and work across the cities around it, county areas included, and we see the same older driveways and backyard patios on jobs in Bellevue and Redmond, where we check each city's own rules the same way.