It will not come off on your hands once dry. portland cement + water = neat cement

That's just a sealer. They used powdered hardener and a powdered release when the deck was poured to stain it. The sealer is Clear Seal 20% from Decorative Concrete Supply. Per the label it's a "non-yellowing, crystal clear sealer." I tore a label off an empty drum to make sure I use the same sealer in the future.

Hi! We are in the middle of a big remodel and need to select the color of our back concrete patio. This caught us off guard, and we have not yet finalized our exterior paint scheme, though we know it will be some sort of gray or muddy gray/brown with white trim and colorful door (navy? turquoise? green? blue?). For the patio, we want something neutral and light that will fade into the background and not be overwhelming with a gray house color. We are leaning toward Brickform Stone Gray. Thoughts? Suggestions? It is hard to select these things with a 1" x 1" color sample! :) Color Samples: Brickform Concrete Colors Thanks so much!

The color is added into the concrete mix beforehand. It was 1/2 the formula of a color called Pewter, and had brown antiquing and a sealer added after it dried. We are wondering if the second batch was accidently mixed with the full strength of Pewter. For those that say that you like the darker color better because you think it goes better/has a nicer contrast with the brick, I don't know how you determine that from the photo that I posted the other day. It's a bad photo and you can barely see the lighter color, or compare it with the brick for that matter. Below is a better photo of the porch with the correct (lighter) color. We purposely picked a lighter shade of gray because we did not want it too dark. We think it looks best with the brick and the gray/green (SW Sweet Carolina) of the shutters. However, if the whole porch can be made to look the same, we will gladly go darker. Front porch finished (the door has not yet been stained) Trailrunner - Thank you for the article. It's upsetting to know that this happens and nothing can be done. No one said a word to me or DH about the fact that the front porch could need two pours...or that the coloring could be off. We were not given anything to read and sign, either. Had we known, would we have done something differently to the porches? Not sure! I will say after reading the article that I can understand what happened. The example given sounds likely what happened to our pours. Our screened in porch turned out perfectly!!!