@Kendrah I love the look of the cobblestone, but it would be extremely expensive to do the whole driveway with it. It's also not great to walk across in heels or for the kids to play on. My friend had mentioned bringing more brick into the landscape because she thought the color would look nicer against the house than cobblestone, and I after playing around with some bricks, I have to agree - the warm brick sets off the cream house color better than the gray cobblestone with cooler tones. So our current plan is to keep the cobblestone border around the entire driveway (we have another big section that will be cream gravel) and change out the aprons to be a faded brick color and add the brick detail inlaid in the concrete by the garage. We will then use the leftover cobblestone to create a curb by the street, since right now the grass just goes right up to the road. I personally love old antique brick driveways that you see at hundred-year-old homes, but they seem to be expensive and not durable, so that idea was quickly vetoed!

Yes I have spent hours looking at pictures. But many do not list the color, and sometimes the same color shows very dark or very light or different in different pics. So I was hoping people could post their pics and describe the name, and describe if it looks darker or lighter than the picture in real life. I know our monitors are all different. The bonus of real live people vs landscaping photos from 2009 is immeasurable to me. Many online pics are mislabeled, this I know because I see the same pics with different concrete names listed in different places. Thank you Jeffrey Grenz for your helpful comments. Especially 160 fading. It helps me eliminate something. More comments are welcome. 641 is sequoia brown, Yosemite Brown and Flagstone Brown and in my top picks I see 5084 which is Omaha Tan, Harvest Gold, and Spanish gold. Mrs S, if you are asking, I have narrowed it down to: Coincidentally most of the ones Jeffrey mentioned above: Yosemite Brown (too brown in some pics) Harvest Gold Spanish Gold San Diego Buff (? too close to gray) Sunset Rose (lighter amount of 160) Baja Red (too red in some pics but may fade since 160) Salmon (too red/pink in some pics) Our landscape gravel is a brownish tannish pinkish red called Santa Fe brown here, and there is some red brick pathway nearby. Judy, any follow up comments are welcome. Mrs S, more comments are welcome. Yes I left a message for the concrete contractor to point me to some real live examples of colored concrete. And asked if he knew the color name of some city owned sidewalks that I like. I have been told the actual concrete when poured and dry appears/is lighter than the small samples? lafdr

I contacted the company of the surface coating when it was installed as I wanted to make sure it was done correctly. I was always advised in the past that you let concrete cure slowly by light spraying and keeping it covered. However both the installer and the concrete coating company said i was wrong and that it didnt need to be covered or kept hydrated. They said dont touch it just let it dry out in the sun and the powder coating (left on for four days which I also thought was excessive) would protect the concrete from the elements until it was ready to wash off. This to me seemed strange to me.. I thought this would prematurely dry the surface of the concrete out too quickly and cause a weakened final product with spalling issues. The pictures seem to indicate this.. Its been an expensive lesson. I wanted block paving and got talked into this option instead. Never again. I totally dropped a ball with this due to other things going on and hoping I could get something ticked off the list of jobs to do. I highly doubt i’ll be able to get him to re-do the work and I dont have faith that once the cars have been driven on it in several weeks time, that it wont just crack and crumble. Thanks for your help anyhow. I wanted to understand if my standards were being unrealistic. I was told there would be some ‘imperfections’ but nothing like what there are. Looks that my concerns were warranted and reasonable after all.

I would understand if those fine parallel looking lines were meant to be there as some sort of roughing up for grip. But the whole thing looks like a hot mess. It's like they didn't even bother or care to go back and smooth out their own footprints while it was still wet, or not know better?, and I'm not sure I've seen that sort of thing before. That just seems rude. And not OK to leave like that or spot treat it. Spot grind what, the whole thing is just one big spot of... sigh. I don't know what will fix that. But after that pouring so far and suggesting spot treatment, I'm not sure I would trust them to do any finishing on the project. I hope others can be more helpful than I am with that.