Riverside Concrete Pro colors, stains, exposes and grinds concrete so a surface answers the tile and brick already on the house instead of against it. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
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What decorative concrete covers
Decorative concrete is every way of finishing a slab other than leaving it gray: color mixed through the load, a stain reacting with the lime in cured concrete, aggregate washed back so the stone shows, saw-cut lines, and grinding a face until its own stone opens up. Most of it can be done to concrete that is already down and sound, which is why the first thing measured on the visit is the slab you have rather than the one you would replace it with.
Riverside Concrete Pro was founded in 2021 by Marco Delgado, who spent 15 years on Inland Empire flatwork crews before that. Around the Wood Streets and Victoria Avenue the houses are Craftsman and Mission Revival from the 1900s to the 1920s, and nearly all of them carry fired clay where you can see it: roof tile, porch tile, brick in the piers. A finish here gets chosen against those, outdoors, at the property.
Finish work is carried out under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job, and colored flatwork is placed and cured to the practice the Portland Cement Association publishes. Every job opens with a sample panel on your own concrete, because a stain draws its color out of the slab it lands on and no two slabs answer alike. The work carries a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
Warning signs
A plain slab poured next to a Craftsman porch reads as a repair rather than as part of the house. Gray is not a neutral beside quarry tile and clay roof tile, and it turns green against them by mid-afternoon. Color picked against the tile itself is what settles it.
Rub a tired surface, and gray dust coming away on your palm means the sealer has gone and the paste beneath it has started to break down. Bare acrylic gives up here long before the color under it does. A grind and two fresh coats bring the tone back up.
Dark blotches under a dull surface are old sealer that never fully came off, and new color laid over them stops dead at the edge of the patch. A stain needs open concrete to react with, so the slab is ground and washed to bare paste before any of it starts.
A crack cutting across your saw lines instead of following one says the slab is moving, and a finish laid over it splits with it inside a season. Riverside sits on sandy loam and granitic alluvium that drains fast and settles where water has run beneath it.
What's included
Standard on every finish we lay, with no add-ons. Each one belongs to the half of the job nobody photographs, because a finish is only ever as good as the concrete it has been asked to sit on.
Panels go down on your own concrete and are left seven days, since a stain cures darker and duller than it looks wet on the day.
Chips are held against your porch tile and brick in daylight, because a shade that reads warm indoors goes green under an afternoon sun.
Old sealer, paint and tile adhesive are taken off to open concrete, as no stain will react through a film left on the surface.
Every crack is opened out, filled and left to harden before color goes down, because a finish laid across a live crack splits along it.
Integral color is dosed into the load at the plant; on cured concrete it goes on as a reactive acid stain or as a water-based one.
The face is broomed, washed back or ground, and pattern lines are cut a quarter of the slab deep so they work as control joints.
Sealer is rolled on thin twice, the second pass across the first, because one heavy coat traps solvent and clouds over the color.
Masking pulled, the site swept and hauled, and a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built handed over at the walk-through.
Your options
Four families of finish, judged on where the color actually lives, how long the look holds here, what suits a period frontage and how many days the crew is on the slab. Stamped work is a fifth, with a page of its own.
| Option | Where the color is | How long it holds | Suits | Days on site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integral color | Mixed through the whole load | 20 to 30 years | A slab being poured from new | None, it goes in at the pour |
| Reactive acid stain | A reaction in the top layer | 15 to 20 years | Matching old brick and quarry tile | 2 days, then 1 to dry |
| Exposed aggregate | The stone itself, no color added | 30 years or more | Anything walked on barefoot or wet | 2 to 3 days, then 7 to cure |
| Ground and honed | The slab's own aggregate, opened | 25 years or more | A sound old slab kept, not torn out | 2 to 3 days, no cure wait |
Nothing in the table is a price. It is where each finish puts the color, which is what decides whether an August sun has it in five years or twenty.
Local knowledge
Two things set a finish here, and neither one is the color chip: what the house is already built of, and how many hours of July sun the surface has to stand under.
The Wood Streets and Victoria Avenue were built out between the 1900s and the 1920s in Craftsman and Mission Revival, and fired clay is visible on nearly every one of those houses. Fired clay is warm and never quite even, so a flat single-tone surface beside it looks printed. That is why a reactive acid stain is what gets specified here most: it mottles as it reacts, and no two square feet of it come out the same.
Heat sets the calendar. Through July and August afternoons average in the mid-90s, and sealer laid on hot concrete flashes off before it can level, so summer work starts at first light and is stopped by mid-morning. The same heat is why the reseal is dated at two to three years rather than left open. The color does not fail; the coat over it does, and a surface caught before that coat is gone takes a wash and two coats instead of a grind.
Our process
Five stages, and the color is not chosen until the second. Everything around it is finding out what the concrete underneath will take, which is the part that decides whether the finish is still there in fifteen years.
Marco Delgado measures the area, tests how the slab takes water and notes the tile and brick it has to sit beside.
Two or three colors go down on your own concrete and are left seven days, so you choose from cured color rather than a chip.
The surface is ground to open paste, cracks are filled and left to harden, and glass, walls and planting are masked off.
Color is laid in the morning, the texture worked as it takes, and the pattern lines sawn a quarter of the slab deep.
Two thin coats four hours apart, masking hauled and the site swept, then a walk-through and the written guarantee.
What moves the estimate
Area sets the floor. After that the figure moves on what has to come off the slab before anything can go onto it, and on how much of the edge is cut and masked by hand. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
A square patio is one mask and one pass. Steps, a curve or a porch return are cut and masked by hand, foot by foot.
Old sealer, paint or tile adhesive has to be ground off before a stain will react, and that is a day the color has not started.
A border, an inlaid band or a second tone means a second mask and a second dry, so the crew is on the slab an extra day.
Color put into the load at the plant adds no day at all. The same shade on cured concrete is a visit with its own prep.
None of it is figured from a photograph. The visit costs nothing, the figure is written at the property, and someone calls you back within 1 business day. (951) 584-0685 or send us a message.
Send the form or call, and someone rings you back within 1 business day. Chips come out to the property and get held against your own tile and brick, because that is the only light the choice can honestly be made in.
Reviews
Three reviews left on Google, Facebook and the BBB by homeowners whose concrete we colored, stained or ground back. None of the three is about a stamped pattern.
“Our porch and front walk are from 1912 and the concrete beside them got poured flat gray in the eighties. He stained it against the quarry tile on the step and left the sample down a week before we picked. It mottles the way the tile does now.”
“I wanted the old back slab broken out and he talked me into keeping it instead. They ground it, honed it and sealed it, and now it looks like it was always meant to be that. It saved the tear-out and took three days rather than three weeks.”
“We had a side yard that turned into an ice rink any time the hose was on it. They washed it back so the stone stands proud of the paste, and it grips wet now. The month the next coat is due went on the sheet, which nobody has done for us before.”
FAQ
What comes up before a finish is chosen: what can be done to concrete already down, how a color gets matched to an old house, and what an inland summer asks of the schedule.
Any finish other than plain gray: integral color mixed through the load, a reactive acid stain, a water-based stain, aggregate washed back so the stone shows, saw-cut patterns, and grinding a slab until its own stone opens up. Pressing a pattern into wet concrete with mats is a job of its own and is answered on the stamped concrete page rather than here.
Yes, and most of this work is exactly that. A cured slab takes a reactive acid stain, a water-based stain, or a grind and hone, provided it is sound, jointed and free of old sealer. What it cannot take is integral color, which has to go into the load at the plant. Whether yours is a candidate is settled by a sample panel left on it for seven days.
By holding the color against the house instead of against a catalog. On the Wood Streets and around Victoria Avenue the Craftsman and Mission Revival stock carries fired clay in the roof tile, the porch tile and the brick piers, and that sets the range. Chips come out to the property in daylight, then two or three go down as panels on your own concrete.
Every two to three years, and heat decides which end of that you are on more than foot traffic does. Through July and August afternoons average in the mid-90s, and it is the coat over the color that breaks down first rather than the color itself. A surface resealed on time takes a wash and two coats. One left until it chalks has to be ground back first.
No, and that is rather the point of it. A reactive acid stain is translucent and works with whatever is underneath, so oil shadows, patch lines and old repairs read through as part of the mottle. Where a mark cannot be lived with, the slab is ground first or the finish goes down an opaque route instead. The sample panel is where you find out which.
October through May. Stain and sealer want a surface between 50 and 90 degrees, and once a Riverside afternoon runs past 95 the sealer flashes off before it has leveled out. Summer jobs are started at first light and stopped by mid-morning for that reason. Rain moves a date rather than shortens it, since sealer needs four dry hours.
Not for finishing concrete already sitting on your own lot. Recoloring, grinding or resealing an existing slab needs nothing from the City of Riverside Building and Safety Division. A new slab can need a permit depending on where it goes and what it carries, and where one is required we file it and meet the inspector ourselves.
The bond of the color, the saw cuts and the seal coats, in writing, handed over at the walk-through, with the terms on the estimate you sign. What sits outside it is wear: color faded on a slab nobody resealed for four years, and a crack that has opened because the ground beneath the concrete moved rather than because the finish failed.
Service area
Where the crew takes chips and sample panels, nearest first. Riverside is the office, and the list below reaches 20 towns inside a 25 mile radius. Each name below opens the page for that town.
Four jobs a finish usually sits on. Each one is measured on the same visit, and where the color goes into the load at the plant, the pour and the finish are one morning of work.
A new patio with the color batched into the load rather than laid on the top.
Aggregate washed back, so the deck still grips under bare feet in August.
A colored frontage on four inches of base, with the saw cuts set out as pattern.
An interior slab ground and honed, so the floor is the structure itself.
A free estimate, measured and written at your own slab, and a call back within 1 business day. The sample panel stays down for you to look at in daylight, and nothing is owed if you leave it there.