using wood strips to form concrete driveway

[orangele2003]

I have a concrete contractor currently redoing my driveway. I had showed him a picture from a concrete technique website which I liked. It showed a driveway using stamped colored concrete. The driveway consisted of different sized squares and rectangles of various colors.

When the contractor started the project, I did not anticipate having anything separating the various square and rectangular forms other than grooves. The contractor used cedar wood strips to construct a matrix of squares and rectangles. He said the reason this was necessary was because since each form would be a different color, you needed to individually color each form (using a sprinkle on powder).

The issue now is that alot of the cedar wood now looks black (from water) and or stained with concrete residue or rutted (from power washing that the contractor did to clean the driveway) and the driveway has not even been completed yet. I have let the contractor know that I am not happy with the project (in addition to the wood form problem, there were other problems in that the concrete hardened before stamps could even be done; some of the forms were not even colored; but lets tackle one problem at a time).

The contractor has addressed how he will deal with some of the problems, but has not suggested any solution for the discolored and rutted wood forms.

Any thoughts on whether wood was appropriate to use in the first place, and what can be done to help fix the problem.

[Dave]

Contractor here used cedar to form expansion joints on the driveway. No black discoloration or discoloration of concrete. They used a transparent sealer after the pour. Seems to work. Been over 2 years now.

However, in my opinion, the wood strips should have been temporary to form the geometric patterns in your case. The patterns are all eye-candy, serve no function. Not expansion joints. Dave

[Big_Jake]

Probably was a really bad idea.

Stamped concrete looks easy when you watch it on TV, but it requires lots of experience and skill, and can be really expensive. Sounds like you hired a 'handyman" when you needed an "artisan".

Sorry to hear, but not much to do besides tearing it out and starting over.

JK

[orangele2003]

Thanks for your input. I live in a city of 300K so not alot of choice in contractors. I have had work done by this contractor before, and he was the most experienced contractor I could find (including stamped work although not with a project identical to mine involving dozens of individual forms colors and involving stamping).