Hey everybody, Mike here. So in this video I'm going to talk about eight different skills that we use when we're finishing concrete. You know sometimes I take some of these skills for granted because it's just stuff that we do every single day and it's like a normal part of our life. But what I want to make sure I help teach you guys is just the little things that we do that help give us success when we're finishing concrete. So that's what we're going to talk about in this video. Now make sure you stick around for the whole video because I'm going to try to explain this the best I can. And I want you to know also that I teach all these skills in much more depth inside the concrete underground which is down below. There's a link for that down below if you want to check that out. So again the concrete underground is down below. Now skill number one is cutting down a garage door for if you're finishing a garage you know how do you tape those doorways and basically this is how we do it you know we dig out about a half inch of concrete along the form and then we just use our mag float to tape of that edge down and give that edge a nice tapered feel so when they drive in the garage they're not hitting a square edge. Also the garage door sets down on this so any rain that hits the outside of the garage door and runs down the door is going to hit that taper and run out. And then another thing we do is we mag float our edges you know when you pour the concrete and then you both float it there always seems to be a little bit of a of either a dip or a tiny bit of a hump right around the edge. So it's important you mag float them out and get them nice and smooth and level that way when you go to power trial your edges look just as nice and clean and sharp and smooth as the rest of the floor does. So this is one of the basic things that we do and there's a there's a certain time when it's best to do this if you do it too early then it's not really going to help out that much and obviously you don't want to do it too late because then you won't be able to work up any pace like I'm working up right there. Now this is one thing that we do that maybe a lot of other people don't right where there's a doorway we usually cut in a joint right here because the concrete floor usually cracks off one of those corners to the doors you know you'll see a small shrinkage or diagonal crack off that and by putting a joint right there or even saw cutting a joint you usually minimize the door from cracking there. So being able to cut joints with just a simple hand joining tool like this is real key to being a good concrete finisher. The joints can be something decorative or they can just be something functional which is what we're going to do in this case and then we are usually always edge wherever there's like a walk-in or a place you're driving we usually always edge the form right there just around that edge it helps make it a little bit stronger and then once we use a joiner and edgeer like this we always flatten it out with a mag float after so we don't leave those marks in the concrete you don't want to leave them there as the concrete hardens because they'll just be harder to get out down the road. Now another thing we do when we have a floor drain in the floor whether it's a garage floor or a house floor this one happens to be a center drain in the garage is the concrete always sags just a little bit when you pour around it you know you pour around it you mag around it and you both float around it it usually leaves the concrete a little bit high like an eighth maybe sometimes a quarter high it's important to dig that down and match that drain so when you're all done power traveling it looks nice and smooth and professional you mean you don't want the concrete higher than the floor drain you definitely don't want it lower than the floor drain but you definitely don't want it higher it just doesn't look good it doesn't look professional so we wait for a certain point for the concrete to get a certain firmness basically you can see how firm that is I'm walking on it it's just about ready to power trial and then we scrape out that high and then we mag float it nice and smooth and match the the floor to the drain and that makes it finish in so much easier another thing we do you know obviously we power trial just about every single floor we do we power trial and knowing the timing of when to get on the floor is key you know there's a certain time when it's just right and then there's also all the other times when it's either too early or too late and knowing the timing is is really a good thing for most finishers to understand if they want to be good at finishing again I go over all this stuff in the concrete on the ground so make sure you check that link out down below Luke's one of the best that finishing he can he can finish the floors with the best of them and then there's a certain pattern we go by too when we finish floors and the pattern we use helps level the floor out even more helps get rid of any little tiny dips and humps so you got a nice even plane and you can see now I'm finishing with a steel trial around that drain once once Luke goes around it with the power trial you know you want to get right on it after and match it right in with a hand trial and we do this every single time we hit the floor with the power trial so a garage floor like this will probably take four to five hits as we're finishing for it before we're done and it's nice and smooth and you can see once Luke goes by and edge with a power trial then I'm gonna go right after him with a hand trial and get it nice and smooth and finish that off and then I'll recut that joint back in with a joiner and make sure that joint looks nice and smooth and clean and neat before I get done and we'll do this two or three times throughout the process to make sure everything looks really really good before we're done now to finish off those garage doors you know you got a hand trial them get them nice and smooth clean them up a little bit more you don't want to just just leave them the way they are so hand trial in them each pass we usually go over with the power trial this one time sometime we'll hit it again a second time and then we'll hand trial these doors like I'm doing right now so this is the initial trial and before we give the final finish on that little taper down and then sometimes we'll depend on how firm the concrete is will leave the broom it right like right away like I'm doing now or we'll wait and hand trial it again and then broom it right after that but this one was setting up pretty fast on us so we gave it the nice smooth broom finish and that'll be the finish on that little tapered part and then to finish the front of the door we'll just give it a nice edge and we usually leave the edge remark because it just looks a little bit more professional in my opinion a little more clean so the the taper down gets a broom finish with an edge like this and then the rest of the floor just gets a nice smooth power trial finish and then the next thing we do as as Luke's trial and I'm coming right behind him with a steel trial and I'm making sure those edges are all nice and cleaned up after each hit that way when we're all done everything looks nice and smooth so those are the basic finishing skills we use on an everyday basis and if you want more in-depth training you want to learn how to do this like a professional again check out the concrete underground link is below thanks again for watching guys we'll see you on the next one