The Ugly Look Of Concrete Is Out
Nature Stone A Unique Flooring That Beautifies, Solves Problems
It’s everywhere around your home - in the garage, the basement, on your patio, even your stoop. It pits, cracks and can be slippery. You guessed it: Unsightly concrete. So why is it around? Concrete has been a building staple for centuries and until now, there hasn’t been a product that permanently strengthens and enhances its look.
Enter Nature Stone, the durable and beautiful solution for a broad range of flooring challenges in basements, garages, patios, pool decks,walkways, recreation rooms and laundry rooms that will last a lifetime.
Nature Stone is a blend of natural stone and specially formulated resin that is expertly hand troweled to create a seamless, slip-resistant granular flooring. It is available in a wide spectrum of colors, from tans, browns and grays to rose, white and black. The look is dazzling, with the epoxy adding a shimmering finish to the natural beauty of river stone, quartz, or marble in their spectacular natural hues. Borders and inlays in contrasting colors add depth and interest.
Nature Stone is a porous product that allows moisture to pass through the matrix eliminating puddling and leaving the surface safe, clean and dry. Water, hydrostatic pressure, even flooding will not harm Nature Stone.
A damp, stained, irregular floor can make a home's basement or garage virtually unusable. Many families use such areas only for storage, avoiding them otherwise. Tile or carpet may provide a quick fix, but moisture, unevenness and other problems will likely require such coverings to be replaced in just a few years.
Concrete, by its nature is porous. Moisture migrates upward from the ground and works its way through the concrete to the surface. Often times you won’t notice the dampness because it just evaporates away and your concrete “appears” dry. But when you cover concrete with carpet, tile, paint or coatings, you are, in effect, sealing the surface and trapping the moisture between the concrete’s surface and the floor covering.
That’s when the real problems start. As the moisture pushes upward, it has no where to go, so it becomes trapped, building pressure, damaging your floor covering and creating a perfect breeding ground for mold and mildew. This is the primary reason why carpets become damp and mildewed, paints and coatings bubble and peel up, and tiles become loose and pop off.
Nature Stone does not trap dampness and is engineered to allow the moisture to breathe through and the conditions that breed mold and mildew are eliminated. Clean up is easy as well. For outdoors or in garages, just periodically hose it off, shop-vac or damp mop. Indoors, damp mop and vacuum regularly. A deep cleaning once a year with a carpet cleaning machine is all that is needed.
Nature Stone is the largest stone and epoxy company in the U.S. and has opened a franchise here in southern Wisconsin. Owner Marty Szekeres saw the product on a patio during a trip to the Cleveland area. The homeowners there loved the product, so he decided to contact the company for further information on their locations nationwide. With no one in Wisconsin offering the product, he decided to open the business here. “I truly believe this innovative product will benefit homeowners here. From damp basements to pitted, stained garage floors or outdoors on patios, not only is Nature Stone a perfect solution, it’s naturally pleasant to look at,” he said. “I also like that it’s natural, it emits no VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and is FDA approved. Having a natural, safe product in homes is important to me.”
Founder Russell Masetta developed Nature Stone.“I came from a family background in service and maintenance of concrete,” he says. At one point, Masetta saw a similar product in warmer climates. After experimenting with different combinations of epoxy and concrete, he finally developed a workable product that would withstand extremes of temperature. “Originally,” Masetta said, “Nature Stone was intended for outdoor use, in projects like pool decks and patios, but with further research and by using smaller more aggregate stones we created an indoor flooring market for basements, garages, sunrooms and laundry rooms.” In fact, Nature Stone is now being used extensively with commercial applications.
