concrete floors in basement of new house are rough

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Bridgeman, thanks for explaining what should've happened with the concrete pour. Chalk it up to a lesson learned. the builder said from the onset of the buying process that the basement was unfinished when he was finishing the house. Unfortunately, i did not ask the right questions...it would've help to have known that the pour was not "a stainable grade concrete."

UPDATE: I've completed grinding of all the floors, and vacuumed up thoroughly. I still need to vinyl patch up some deeper voids. But, my question is if i have 1800 square feet that i want to overlay / skim coat, can i break that up into sections or rooms by putting tape in the door like a threshold effect, or will the overlay perform better if i do the entire floor at once?

Is there a particular overlay material that performs best? Any tips for mixing up that many batches at once?
 
A very skilled finisher could possibly put down 1800 S.F. of floor leveler, but it would be a very long day if it's done right. I wouldn't recommend it if you haven't done a lot of concrete work (batching, placement, finishing) before, as the results might be unsatisfactory. Breaking up the area into smaller portions would be the way to go.

It's been too many years since I last used floor levelers of any kind, and have only done so two or three times. Meaning I'm not in a position to recommend a good one. You should be able to Google it and come up with a few brands having decent performance reviews.
 
Ok, so maybe it's my lack of knowledge at this point, but if you were going to lay down leveler anyway, why wouldn't you do it in the first place and save all that dust & sweat & cost??
 
slownsteady said:
Ok, so maybe it's my lack of knowledge at this point, but if you were going to lay down leveler anyway, why wouldn't you do it in the first place and save all that dust & sweat & cost??
Click to expand...

I'm definitely not the expert; but, here's my take. It rained on the concrete while it was being poured, apparently enough to cause the top layer to be really dusty. It was also very pitted and uneven; so, it would've taken multiple skim coats to eliminate all the flaws. I wanted to make sure the overlay would adhere properly to the existing concrete; so, i used a grinder to get up all the soft dusty top layer. The grinder cost me less than $500 to rent (including supplies); so, i thought this would be more cost effective than multiple overlays. Yes, it was hard work to grind down 1800 square feet; but, i think it was the right way to do it.
 
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