The river rock guy who quoted me for repair/redo said it's a bitch. Pressure washer won't really do it as he uses a 15hp 3500psi unit just to wash the stuff, and thatonly knocks off a few stones here and there.

How is the rock set? In epoxy or mortar?

Mike Mitrook had a real cool coat/texture put in his new house in Gainesville... Maybe he'll appear and let you know the name of it; I can't recall. I was interested in redoing my pool deck with it.

I'm not looking for that kind of expense. It's going to cost about $2000 to get it re-river rocked, so I figured about teh same for any other type of texture.

It's put down with epoxy.

Spa has 1/4" lip exposed or so, the screen room brackets are roughly 1/2" thick. But if whatever your thinking about can be tapered down, the thickness wouldn't matter.

Look at the Polymer stamped concrete material, i.e. Superstone. This can be installed 3/8" or thicker over the chatahoochee and can be tapered to zero if needed. Check with Superstone (website) and they will tell you if you need to wash first with Muriatic acid or some other type of prep.

sledge hammer and see what that does and it most definatley won't break the slab depending on how thick it is. do you have the thickness on the slab?

And a foot thick on the spa level.