I have a stone entryway for which I went for a real natural look, but after a couple years of living with it I'm kicking myself for going a little "too" natural. I think I recall the stone is called Pennsylvania slate; it's essentially flat slabs, but they're varying thicknesses and some have secondary ridges and a few high spots, with the worst being about a half inch.

I've Googled around and seen products like stand-up concrete grinders with vacuum hoses to pull out dust, but I can't find a place that rents them, and one concrete company guy said a similar tool they have would be very difficult to do much with.

I'm not looking for "totally smooth, uniform and even"-- I just want to bring some of the high spots closer to the average level of the entryway as a whole. I've got a photo to show what I'm talking about but the image attachment thing says it's looking for a URL; I've got a named image on my computer, but I don't know how to give it a URL.

Anyway, any ideas?

Thank you!

-- Kelly

 

http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...-pictures.html

 

Hey Mitch--

Well, I put my pic on PhotoBucket, pasted the URL into the URL line and did a preview and just got a bunch of text gibberish.

How does "You can also embed the image" work?

--Kelly

 

I hope this is your pic!

 

That's it! Great.

Now, just waiting for help...

--Kelly

 

I don't know, I think I might hire this done - I'd be concerned about whether I could make the recently worked surface match the part which was left alone.

I can see your point, though, that looks like a tougher surface to walk on than you would want inside.

 

A beefy (7"-minimum) angle grinder, with a large masonry wheel would do the trick nicely. Start with a coarse grind, then final passes with a finer texture wheel. You can have a helper with a shop vac sucking the dust into a fabricated hood to minimize the mess. I'd wait for warmer weather, and do it when you can open the front door and put a big box fan on the threshold, blowing anything the vac doesn't catch, outside. A few open windows in nearby rooms would help the box fan to create a positive outflow.

After a thorough vacuuming to pick up any remnant dust, sealing everything with a few coats of Kure-N-Seal ought to make it hard to tell where the grinding was done.

 

Okay, thank you! I'll give that a shot (when the weather gets warmer)!