I just built my house go to strusehouse.blogspot.com
I did my own poured concrete countertop as well as colored concrete.
Ok I did dyed concrete for the floors they I ground them to expose some agraget then sealed it to bring out the shine. On the counter tops I dyed the concrete then ground them and polished them. My wife wants the kitchen counter tops darker so we are acid dying them more of a chocolet color.
I would definatly do it again. But I have radiant floor heat so my toes are nice and warm.
One neat thing you can do with the cracks in the floor is use them as an artistic feature. Use a bright color and slurry the crack then grind the floor. It will leave lightning type accents in the floor. Wife would only let me slurry the grout lines ( we diamond saw cut a tile 4x4 ft pattern in the floor ) in a line brown contrast color. We did raised grout lines so the floor is smooth across it's surface no dips in the grout lines to catch dirt.
Let me know if you have any specific questions. We used a solvent based acrylic to seal the floor. It smelled for days. Nasty stuff.
Your sawcuts and the tile texture would count as score lines, but if you want a large slab with minimal or no cracking look into properly placing expansion joints and score lines into it. You can coat them, seal them, color them, hide them (in a 4x4' tile pattern, space them 8 or 12' apart), and all that for whatever desired results, bout the only downside to them is that you don't have a solid uninterupted slab (which could be a structural or decor requirement you have to meet, it's all situational).
That's the way I've seen it done before in new construction. Never seen anyone color stain old concrete.
Its called paint.
OK, enough of me being a sob while agreeing completely with you.
Getting rid of the old natural grey conretes and replacing them with new and colored concrete is becoming very popular in commercial aplications and I don't see why not for residential either. It might not be available in some areas yet (a willing and able contractor and/or cement plant is all you need), but you can get any desired color and texture you want. Choose a few of your desired favorites that go well together in some pattern and you have one of the most economic and flexible forms of artistic hardscape available at the moment. The only thing cheaper than it is the generic natural (out here, it's Mexican grey) they add the coloring into, so clients like when you talk about getting a lot of ooohs and aaahs for only pennies per square yard.
Couple weeks ago I went along on a sign-off of a recent decorative concrete instalation at Hoag Hospital. They've been using it for a while and have a set palette, so we designed a pattern and then simply called it out as color A, B and C. I didn't know it until I went to the site walk that A and B are the typical generic natural with color added but C was very unique to the hospital grounds and I've never seen it before. Concrete contractor had burlap bags full of these little sea shells (which I speculate only the lord knows how many 3rd world children were exploited to gather). The contractor would take some shells and lay them out, throw a steel plate ontop of them, get the whole crew to dance and sing to some mariachi music for a few minutes while hopping around on the steel plate. They would then scoop up the desirabley pulverized shells and lay them in a thick layer ontop of a generic natural pour, and press them into the conrete. I was surprised to find out that the sea shell concrete was relatively cheap. Noticabley more costly than the usual colored concrete, but still in the additional nickle and penny range per yard.
Right now I'm actually interested and looking into any vehicular rated permiable colored or natural conretes I can find (ideal for LEED designs and large flatop surfaces where drainage and runoff are the issue, and you want the rainwater to be able to get into the soil underneath). Some samples I've been seeing it's scary how smooth they're getting the surface texture these days (which in permiable concrete is an oxymoron and has been a major downside to the product as not even Pamela Anderson would take a knee to it). Soon as i'm confident enough in the product and method of instalation is suitable enough for a large expanse of playground flat-top I'm sure that we're gonna start using it.
