Staining Concrete Questions

Looks nice, but what is the price associated with that?

I am not sure, as I haven't personally had it done...however, when my relative had it done to look like stone, it was considerably cheaper than actual stone...

also, it has been in place for about a decade with no fading or cracking at all...

Stamping is cheap if you were already gonna pour a patio, but it's probably more than you want to spend if you already have concrete poured

If you were doing new concrete, I'd do the stamping. With this old that you have, you don't know how it will take the stain. Especially if something was spilled on it, the stain will no go thru or you will be able to see the problem area.

Just stain it yourself. Not much to lose. You can't mix stain colors, but you can have different applications of stain. The first would be a 50/50 brown stain (50% water / 50% stain) base stain. Then come back with a black (10 stain/ 90 water) on the next application.

I once did a brown and blue that came out nice in the garage, but was on a new garage. Blue isn't as strong as brown or black stains, so I'd bump it up to about 30 or 40%.

I always used Kemiko stains. about 50 a gallon. Sealer is expensive, and really gets sucked up on a porous outside floor. I don't think you need it myself.

My dad painted his huge concrete patio and his entire driveway with some concrete paint several years ago. He tried to get fancy and make it look like stones on the patio. It looked like crap at first, but after a few years of it aging it actually looked okay. He had like 6 different colors, and painted rock shapes with a brush onto it. And outlined each shape in a cream/tan color to make it look like rocks set in mortar. I have no idea what he was thinking. But he also used a power roller and rolled the entire driveway. It had a two lane circular drive in the front, and a two lane stretch all the way back to the garage, which was in the back of the house. Maybe 100 feet from the road to the back. He was able to do the driveway in a weekend with the roller, doing two coats. It held up very well for the next 10 years they lived there. This was also on new concrete so not sure how well it would work with old, but I would think you could clean it up with a pressure washer or maybe spread some acid on it to rough up the old surface.

Hard to tell in this pic but it was from the listing when they sold it a couple years ago.