Ontario Concrete Pro colors, stains, exposes and scores concrete across this city, picking the finish against the brick, tile and paint that are already on the property. Victor Salgado lays it himself.
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One family, several finishes
Decorative concrete is a family of finishes, not one product, and what separates them is where the color lives. Pigment batched into the load runs the whole depth of the pour. An acid stain works chemically on the lime in concrete that has already set hard. Washing the paste back uncovers the stone the mix was made from. Saw cuts and a polished face add no color at all and work on light instead. Pressing a pattern into wet concrete is the fifth way, and it has its own page.
Ontario Concrete Pro has been finishing flatwork here since 2020, and Victor Salgado, who came to it after 14 years finishing flatwork across the Inland Empire, cuts and stains the panels himself. The first question on an Ontario lot is what the new surface has to stand next to: a brick porch pier, a barrel-tile roof, a garage door somebody painted last spring. Color is judged outdoors against the things nobody intends to change.
This is CSLB C-8 work and it carries liability insurance on every job on every slab. Recoloring or resealing a slab already down changes no structure, and where a new slab reaches the public walk or a pool enclosure the plan is filed with the Building Department, City of Ontario first. No coating stiffens a slab that moves, so old concrete is drilled and read before any color is discussed, and every job leaves with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
When a finish is failing
A film peeling away in flakes the size of a hand has lost its grip on the concrete, usually because it went on too thick or over a slab that was still giving off moisture. Recoating traps the problem. The old film has to come off chemically and go back on thin.
Where a spray head clips the edge of a slab, the same arc gets wet twice a day and dries with the minerals left behind. On stained work that arc turns chalky and pale within a couple of summers. Moving the head is half the repair and the other half is refinishing.
A warm amber cast over the whole surface, worst where the sun reaches longest, is the sealer ambering rather than the color changing underneath. Older solvent acrylics do it here in three or four summers. Strip the film and the tone you chose is still on the concrete.
Saw lines are a quarter of an inch deep and their edges are the thinnest concrete on the slab. Once they start breaking out into small crescents, the joint is taking load it was never cut to take, and a slab moving under the pattern is the thing to fix first.
Standard on every job
Eight things included on decorative work in this city, none of them added back as a line later. Several exist because color chosen indoors, off a chip, is the commonest way this trade goes wrong.
Samples are held against the brick, the roof tile and the trim in daylight, since a chip under a showroom lamp reads nothing like a yard.
Two finish panels stay on site over a weekend so you see them wet, dry, at breakfast and at five in the afternoon before choosing.
Any slab being kept is bored through and the joints pressed for movement, so nothing is promised over concrete that will not hold it.
Porch piers, walls and door thresholds are covered before acid goes on the ground, because a stain splash on original brick is permanent.
Heads throwing onto the new surface are found and turned or swapped, since hard water drying on a finish is what marks it first.
Cut layouts are set out off the building wall rather than the slab edge, so the pattern lines up with the door and window openings.
Outdoor work gets two coats of a sealer built to hold its clarity in sun, with grit worked into the second wherever it is walked wet.
Pigment number, stain, dilution and sealer go onto your paperwork beside the month the next coat falls due, and the workmanship guarantee.
Four ways to finish it
The four we lay most in this city, compared on where the color actually sits, how each behaves in an unshaded Ontario yard, and what it asks of you afterward. Just one of the four can be applied to a slab that has sat in the ground for years.
| Option | Color sits | In open sun | Reseal | Best beside |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integral color | Through all 4 inches of the pour | Wear shows the same tone underneath | Every 3 years | New pours on open frontages |
| Reactive acid stain | A reaction in the top 1/16 inch | Mottles further as it ages | Every 2 to 3 years | Brick porches and older paths |
| Exposed aggregate | No pigment, the gravel is the face | Nothing in it for sun to bleach | Every 4 years | Drives, side yards, pool surrounds |
| Saw cut and polished | In the cut lines and the polish | Sheen flattens before tone shifts | Every 2 years outdoors | Garage floors and covered porches |
Aggregate needs the least attention over a decade. Staining is the one route that rescues a slab you already own instead of starting again.
Two ends of this city
A finish here is settled by two things: the material it has to live beside, and how many hours of direct sun the surface takes once it is finished.
Along the Euclid Avenue grid the bungalows run from the 1900s to the 1920s and many still carry their brick, porch piers, low garden walls, chimney stacks in a red weathered past any color chart. A stain mixed to sit under that brick reads as though the walk came with the house, which a pressed pattern beside the same piers does not. So those lots lean to a stain, a scored line at the spacing of the porch, or aggregate washed back to a stone that picks up the mortar.
Out in Ontario Ranch the houses are a decade old at most and the choice arrives narrowed: the builder handed over a palette, and a finish has to work inside those exterior colors. That suits integral color, dosed by the yard, landing on a number rather than a reaction. Sun is the other half of both answers. Summers here sit in the mid-90s for weeks, and it is ultraviolet on the sealer, not traffic, that ends most finishes, which is why the reseal date is on the paperwork before we go.
How the work runs
Five stages. The color is settled in the first two, on your own ground and in your own light, because every stage after that is machinery and chemistry with no opinion in it.
Victor Salgado measures, drills whatever concrete is there now, and photographs the brick, tile and paint the finish has to answer to.
Two panels are left on site for a weekend. What you approve goes onto one sheet as pigment, dilution and cut layout, with the palette checked.
The old surface either leaves the site with base rebuilt behind it, or stays and is opened with a grinder, its cracks routed, and primed.
Each finish has its own clock: pigment rides in with the truck, aggregate is washed the same evening, stain and saw cuts follow the cure.
Acid work is neutralized and flushed until the runoff is clear, then two sealer coats go on in the cool of the day and we walk it with you.
What moves the number
Area sets the floor and preparation sets nearly everything above it. Two yards of identical size can be a day apart purely on what is under the finish and how many hands the color needs.
Keeping a sound slab drops the demolition, the haulage and the base. Whether it can be kept is what the drill answers on the visit.
Pigment is one line on a batch ticket. A stain is brushed on, left to react, then neutralized and flushed by hand over two working days.
A wide grid of straight cuts goes quickly. Curves taken around a planter, or a second stain inside a border, add masking and a further pass.
Side gates on the older Ontario lots are near 3 feet wide, so machinery is carried round in parts and setting up eats most of a day.
Reading the concrete costs you nothing. Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the call that books that visit comes within 1 business day. (909) 404-9502 or send us a message.
Fill in the form or ring the office on East Holt Boulevard. Victor Salgado drills whatever concrete you already have, leaves two panels on it and writes the figure at the end of that visit.
Ontario homeowners
Three decorative jobs in this city, described by the people who paid for them: one beside original brick, one inside a builder palette and one that saved a slab from the skip.
“Our porch piers are the original 1918 brick and every sample I had been shown was either too orange or too pink next to them. He mixed two stains, brushed them onto the actual walk and left them until Sunday. We picked the one that went quiet in the afternoon light and it still looks right.”
“Our place is out in Ontario Ranch, where exterior colors come off the builder list, so I expected to be told it could not be done. He worked out an integral pigment that landed inside the list, poured the side yard in it and gave us the batch number in writing for when we extend it.”
“The sealer somebody else put on had gone amber and was flaking off in patches the size of my hand. I was told by two people the whole thing needed replacing. These lads stripped the film, washed it right back and put two thin coats on. Same concrete, and it reads like a new floor.”
Questions we get
What people settle before they choose: what can go over concrete that is already down, which finishes survive a summer here, and how the color is matched to a house rather than a chart.
Area starts it and preparation decides most of the rest. A slab that drills sound wants grinding and a bond coat, which leaves out the breaking up, the trucking away and the base underneath; one that has to go carries all three. Labor comes after that from the finish itself, since pigment is a line on a batch ticket while a stain is brushed, reacted and flushed by hand over two days.
Yes, if it drills sound and sits still. We bore through it on the visit to read the thickness, stand on the joints to feel for rocking, and follow every crack to its end. A hairline is routed, filled and taken into the cut layout. Concrete that shifts underfoot will print that movement through any finish laid over it inside two winters, and that slab is written up as a tear-out instead.
Washed aggregate. Its face is gravel, and gravel holds nothing that sun can bleach, so a drive finished that way reads the same in year ten as in year one. Integral pigment comes next, because the tone carries on underneath whatever the surface gives up. Stain and polish do last in this city, but each leans on the film above it, so their life is really the sealer being renewed on time.
Outdoors, on a 2 to 3 year cycle, and at the short end of that where nothing shades the slab. Ultraviolet is what attacks the film, and Ontario supplies a great deal of it from May to October. Beneath a cover or inside a garage the same coat goes 4 years. Your due month is put on the hand-over paperwork, because renewing on schedule is what separates a finish lasting a decade from one giving up in four.
Close, and by testing on your own concrete rather than by number. Acid stain is a reaction with the lime in the slab in front of you, so its age, its mix and anything spilled on it move the outcome, and no two pours take a color alike. Euclid Avenue brick has weathered a century as well, so we mix two candidates, brush them onto the ground they will cover and leave them out over a weekend before anybody decides.
On a covered porch or a garage floor, yes. In an open yard it is the shortest-lived of the four: the sheen is a mechanical polish held by a sealer, and outdoors that coat wants renewing about every 2 years while grit tracked across it dulls the surface between times. Where a client wants that look outside, we usually grind lighter, cut lines into it and let the pattern carry it instead.
How repairable it is depends on which one you chose, which is worth knowing beforehand. Integral color takes a patch well, because the same tone runs right through the concrete. Aggregate can be broken out and rewashed panel by panel. A stain is the hardest, since the repair has to reproduce a reaction, which is why the dilution and the product go on your paperwork on the day the job finishes.
Walk it a day after the final coat, put the furniture back at 72 hours, drive on it at 7 days where the concrete is new. On a resurfaced slab that last figure falls away, because the concrete below finished curing years ago and only the overlay and its coats are still hardening. Keep irrigation off the area for a week whatever the finish, since water landing on a green sealer leaves a spot inside the film.
Towns we finish in
Nearest first, measured straight-line from the East Holt Boulevard yard. Panels, saw and grinder go out to every one of them, and the whole list covers 20 towns within a 25-mile radius.
Four slabs that most often end up carrying a finish in this city. Any of them can be measured on one visit and written into a single estimate, and where two run together the saw layout is planned across the joint rather than stopping at it.
The slab behind the house, poured to carry a finish now or years later.
Poured deeper for vehicles, and the usual home for a washed aggregate face.
A surround kept light in tone, with grit worked into the second coat.
Indoor floors, ground flat and polished in rooms the sun never bleaches.
One visit settles it: a hole drilled through what is there now, two panels left on your own concrete, and a written figure before we drive off. Say when you book whether the slab is already down, because that answers half the question.