Floors: Concrete. Polish. Cardboard?

This week on stuff, we're talking about the polished concrete floor. Like I said over on stuff.co.nz, I was skeptical, or rather, worried about living on such a hard surface, but talking to some health professionals did make me feel a bit better. Looking at it now, it is a rather glorious finish and it's not even finally polished yet, still covered in dust and awaiting its final buff and seal coat. 
Because we are trying to save money at every opportunity, we did wonder whether there were any of the parts of this process that we could do ourselves. And I can happily report there were. Even though they are super small. We could have hired a grinder and done the sanding ourselves, but there is no way I think we would have got the finish these guys got - they just have the experience. We are however, going to do the light sand downstairs because we're just going to paint it (and there will be carpet in some areas too). And upstairs, we covered the whole thing ourselves - saving over $150. It sounds like such a small amount, but all the small amounts pile up really quick....and that's what we need, a few dents in the outlay to help the budget!