Ontario Concrete Pro settles the pattern, the color and the joint layout at the estimate, because all three are fixed the hour the concrete goes down. Victor Salgado stamps with the crew.
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How a stamp is chosen
Stamped concrete is a texture pressed into wet concrete and a color carried in the mix or broadcast onto it, so both are settled before the truck arrives and neither is reversible afterward. A pattern that reads wrong against the house is not sanded back later, the slab comes out. The choice is therefore made standing on the ground it will cover, beside the walls it has to sit against.
Ontario Concrete Pro was founded in 2020 by Victor Salgado, who had 14 years on Inland Empire flatwork crews before that. He carries the mats and a color chart to the measurement, lays two or three patterns on the dirt at the size they will be seen, and photographs them beside the siding, the brick and the roof tile before anything is written down.
Decorative flatwork goes in under a CSLB C-8 concrete license with liability insurance on every job. Whether a patterned slab inside your own lot line needs filing is asked at the counter, because Ontario publishes no exempt-work list. Where one runs into a cover, a pool enclosure or the public walk, the drawing goes to the Building Department, City of Ontario. Every job leaves with a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built.
When a stamped slab is done
A stamped surface gone gray in the open while it kept its color under the eaves has lost its sealer, not its color. West and south facing slabs take full sun from June to September, and the film burns off there years before it does in shade. Reseal it and the tone comes back.
A path worn smooth between the door and the gate is different: the texture itself has gone. Where color was broadcast onto the surface rather than mixed through it, that layer is an eighth of an inch deep, and once traffic is through it no sealer will hide the gray beneath.
A milky haze trapped beneath the sealer is salt carried up by water moving through the slab, usually a sprinkler head or a planter draining under the edge. It returns after every wash because the water is still arriving. The seal comes off, the source moves, the surface is resealed.
Shrinkage lands in the joints somebody cut for it. A crack wandering across the stamp instead means the ground under that slab moved, and it cannot be ground out and patched invisibly, because the repair has to reproduce a texture and a color mixed years ago.
On every stamped job
Eight things are standard, none of them a line added back later, and most of them exist because a stamp is a one-shot decision made in the few hours the concrete stays workable.
Patterns are laid out at full size where the slab will go, so the scale is judged against the house rather than off a brochure page.
The mix number, the release shade and the pattern name go on your paperwork, so a future repair or extension starts from the same three numbers.
Soft or organic ground comes out before base goes down, since a stamped slab that later cracks cannot be patched without the repair showing.
Integral color is dosed into the truck at the plant rather than shoveled in on site, which is what keeps two loads on one slab the same tone.
Saw lines are drawn onto the pattern before the pour so they fall on a grout line or a border, not straight through the middle of a stone.
The crew is set by the forecast, not the square footage, because the slab has to be stamped end to end inside one window with no cold seam.
A solvent-based acrylic goes on in two coats after the cure, the second carrying a non-slip grit wherever the slab is wet underfoot.
The site is swept, the border tooled clean, and a written workmanship guarantee against defects in how it was built is handed to you.
Four ways to color it
How the color goes in matters more here than which stone the mat imitates, because it decides what the surface looks like in ten years of Inland Empire sun. The base and the slab beneath are identical in all four.
| Option | Color depth | Suits | Upkeep | Time on site |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Integral color | Through the full 4 inches of slab | Drives, walks and west-facing patios | Seal every 3 years | 2 days, then 7 to cure |
| Color hardener | About an eighth of an inch of surface | Shaded patios and covered porches | Seal every 2 years | 2 days, then 7 to cure |
| Stamped overlay | A skin bonded over sound concrete | A slab that is flat, level and uncracked | Seal every 2 years, keep vehicles off | 2 to 3 days, then 3 to cure |
| Scored and stained | Stain worked into a cut line | Matching original work on pre-war houses | Seal every 3 years | 3 days, then 7 to cure |
Full afternoon sun and a lot of foot traffic point to integral color; a shaded patio can carry the deeper look a hardener gives.
Two halves of one city
The pattern question is answered differently at the two ends of this city, and neither answer comes out of a catalog: one end has an era to match, the other has a palette to work inside.
North of Holt Boulevard the houses date from the 1900s through the 1930s, and much of their original flatwork is still there, concrete scored into large squares, sometimes tinted red at the porch. A stamped slab landing beside that has to read as the same generation of work, which usually means a wide square or a plain ashlar at the original spacing rather than a cobble pattern with forty stones to the yard.
Ontario Ranch is the reverse problem. The houses are new, the flatwork is new, and the color is not open: the community has an approved exterior palette and the stamped slab has to land inside it, which narrows a chart of thirty tones to about four before anyone looks at a mat. We take the palette sheet at the measurement and choose within it, and where a patio already exists we match its edge instead.
How a stamped job runs
Five stages, and two of them happen before a form is set. Everything decorative is agreed and written down first, because the crew has one working window to get all of it into the concrete.
Victor Salgado measures the area, lays two or three patterns out at full size against the house and photographs them, then writes the figure.
You pick the pattern, the color method and the release shade from samples, checked first against the community palette out in Ontario Ranch.
The ground is dug out and proved, base compacted, and the forms and the border are set to the pattern rather than simply to the shape of the area.
Concrete arrives at daybreak in summer, and is placed, floated, released and stamped in sequence, then the edges are worked by hand.
Joints are sawn on the pattern lines the same day. The slab cures, then it is washed, sealed in two coats and walked with you.
How the figure is reached
Square footage starts it, and then the pattern does the rest. Two slabs of the same size can differ by a day of labor purely on how much of the work is done by hand after the mats come off.
A running bond of large squares is laid fast. A cobble or a random stone doubles the touch-up, because every joint is retooled by hand afterward.
Integral color is priced into the mix by the yard. A hardener with an antique release is two more materials and a second pass over the slab.
A contrasting border, a soldier course or a saw-cut band is a second color and a second layout, and it is what puts hours into a small patio.
Past 95 degrees the stamp window shortens, so a July slab is placed at first light with more finishers on it than the same slab needs in November.
Every estimate is measured and written on site, and the call that fixes a time for the visit comes within 1 business day. (909) 404-9502 or send us a message.
Send the form or call the office and we set a time to bring the mats out. The pattern, the color method and the total are written down at your house, and none of it obliges you to book.
From homeowners here
Three reviews left by homeowners whose stamped work we poured, one on the old grid, one out in the newer tracts and one in the middle of a July heatwave.
“Our house is from 1926 and the porch has the original scored concrete on it. I expected a catalog of fake cobbles and instead he brought mats out and put a large square pattern down at the same spacing as the porch. Visitors assume the walk has always been there.”
“We are in Ontario Ranch and the color had to sit inside the approved list, which two other contractors did not want to deal with. He read the palette sheet, mixed three sample boards inside it and let us leave them out in the yard for a week before deciding.”
“They poured 540 square feet in the third week of July. The truck was here before six, there were six of them on it and the whole thing was stamped by the time it got properly hot. No seam anywhere and the sealer went on a fortnight later as promised.”
Common questions
Pattern, color, heat, sealing and what happens later, answered for a stamped slab in this city rather than for decorative concrete in general.
It is the pattern and the color method that move it, not the stamping itself. A large square pattern in integral color adds little labor to the same slab, while a random cobble with a contrasting border and an antique release can add a full day of hand work on 400 square feet. Every estimate is measured and written on site.
No. The texture is pressed in while the concrete is still plastic and the color is either in the mix or broadcast onto that same surface, so both are permanent within a few hours of placement. A tinted sealer can shift the tone a little later on, but changing the pattern means removing the slab. This is why we settle it in writing at the measurement.
Integral color for anything in full sun or under traffic, hardener for shade. Integral is dosed into the truck, so the color runs through all 4 inches and a chip or a worn line shows the same tone underneath. A hardener sits about an eighth of an inch deep and gives a richer, more varied surface, which is worth having on a covered patio and not on a west-facing walk.
Every 2 to 3 years, and toward the shorter end on anything taking full afternoon sun from June to September. The sealer is what carries the color and the sheen, and it is what fails first here. A slab under a cover can go longer. Wash it and reseal on that cycle and the surface holds its tone for decades; leave it and the exposed areas fade to gray.
The color decides that far more than the pattern does. A dark charcoal or deep brown slab in the open is uncomfortable underfoot by noon through the summer, and the same pattern in a sand or buff tone is not. If a slab runs to a pool or a lawn and people will cross it with no shoes on, we steer the choice light and put the darker tone into a border.
Usually, and by copying the layout rather than buying a mat that looks old. Original flatwork north of Holt Boulevard is scored into large squares at a set spacing, sometimes tinted at the porch. We measure that spacing, saw the new slab to it and either stamp a plain texture or stain the cut lines, so the new work reads as the same generation instead of sitting beside it as a pattern.
The color often does and the concrete usually does not, though the city publishes no exempt-work list, so the slab is checked at the counter rather than waved through. Where the job touches a cover, a pool enclosure or the public walk the drawing goes to the Building Department, City of Ontario. In Ontario Ranch the community palette limits the color, so we work from the palette sheet before showing samples.
Past 95 degrees the concrete stiffens sooner and the window for pressing a clean impression gets short, which is a stamping problem before it is a curing one. Through July and August we place at daybreak with extra finishers, so the mats run end to end with no cold seam through the middle. If the forecast turns extreme we move the date rather than accept a shallow print.
Where we stamp
The eight nearest towns on our list, with the straight-line distance from the yard on East Holt Boulevard. The full list runs to 20 towns inside 25 miles.
Four jobs that get stamped on the same visit or take the pattern to its edge, priced in one written estimate and poured by the same crew in the same week.
The slab most stamped work goes on, dug out and poured with the fall set away from the house.
A stamped surround in a light tone, with the non-slip grit worked into the second coat.
Stains, saw-cut scoring and exposed finishes where a stamp is not the right answer.
A drive stamped at the apron or across the whole run, poured at the depth it has to carry.
Two minutes on the form gets a date. We bring the mats and the color chart to the house, put the pattern and the figure in writing there, and leave both with you either way.