Garage Floor

[Meely]

Has anyone ever gone through the process of painting their garage floor ( you know the grey with the flecks.....)?

 

I have a garage floor that I am looking to clean and paint.

 

Was thinking of using one of those kits they sell that come with all the cleaner, paint and flecks I will need.

 

Has anyone ever gone through the process?

Can anyone recommend a good product for cleaning and painting?

Anything I should be careful of?

Anyone have good/bad results? Horror stories?

 

Thanks for any help.

 

Meely

[crappieperchhunter]

If it's not to late Meely remind me in a couple of weeks when I am up in Caygeon. Our neighbor there did his cement porch last summer. Looked real good too. Had several different color choices if I remember correctly.

 

Anyway I don't have contact info for him so remind me and I will ask him when I see him. Or stop at his place when you are up that way. His name is Ian and he is the neighbor right beside me on the bridge side. Great guy and I know he will happily help you out...plus you will be able to check out the work for yourself. Just tell him Steve and Debbe sent yah.

[F7Firecat]

I own a business that does industrial floor coatings and I can tell you acid etching although the easiest method to perform is not an option. It does not provide the necessary preparation to keep a coating down long term. In the coating insustry, acid ethcing is a last reort if you cannot mechanically prepare the surface. Sooner or later the coating you put down will come off with acid etching, thus wasting your time and money.

 

You need mechanical abrasion such as grinding, very heavy sanding or sandblasting to keep the coating down. Best option for a home owner would be to go to your local rental store and rent a floor maintainer and purchase some 24 to 40 grit sanding pads and heavily sand the floor.

 

Sweep and vacuum up the floor and then paint with a 2 part epoxy. When you mix your epoxy up, make sure you mix as per the correct mix ratio, (dont forget to add the hardener. Use a paint brush to cut in, then pour a ribbon on the floor use a window squeegee and spread out the resin with the window squeegee to the desired thickness and then backroll with a nine inch roller. Do not mix up too much as epoxies have a pot life, so once it is mixed use it quickly.

 

Best place to get epoxy would be a local Sherwin williams or Dulux paints. A solvenated epoxy for your primer would be the best, as it will penetrate into the pores of the floor. A top coat of 100% solids epoxy would be best.

 

Dont waste you time with one component garage floor paint unless you want it to come off your with your tires.

 

Bryan

[krixxer]

You can rent the big floor sanders at home depot.

 

When I did my paint booth floor I just ripped it up with the sander and used epoxy fuel tank primer I had left over from a previous job. I followed up with exterior polyurethane paint; again something I had left over. Five years or daily abuse and still holding strong.

 

If I had to clean up the shop floor I think I would try concrete polishing. I just like the way it looks.

 

 

 

Bryan - do you know how much is polishing of a shop floor ~7k sq feet

 

Kris

[cynmar]

Myself and employees just did a two part epoxy floor paint job. Be very careful with the product you buy and the associated pot life. We had to use Brodi's epoxy paint superfast and it only had a 25 minute pot life. DO NOT waste time trying to cut in with a brush as you won't have time. We found the best bet was to carefully use a small narrow roller with the recommended 10mm. nap. As well, the spreading with a squeegee didn't work in the long and narrow hallways to we rolled with the same nap but with a generous amount on the roller. As well, the industrial two part epoxy product is NOT cheap. I will just say that the product we used was in excess of $1000. for 12 litres. Dry time on the product we used was 7 hours. You can buy product with a longer pot life of up to 45 minutes but the dry time is longer as well. Oh, and although it says you can clean up with soap and water, LOL, be prepared to just throw things away. The rollers and cut in brush were toast and a good thing we used liners in the roller tray.

 

Bill

[cynmar]

For polishing a concrete floor you need to use varying grits of diamond pads depending on the end result you want to achieve. If you want to get rid of any lippage and have a glass like finish you'll need to start around a 30 grit diamond metal pad and work up to probably a 1500 grit diamond resin pad. You'll also need a pulse vac , you'll burn out a regular shop vac as the slurry you'll be picking up packs the filter solid. A relatively full set of diamond pads will cost you around 2000.00 Now you can get away with less than this , but depends on the state of the floor and what you want to end up with. You'll also still have to impregnate the floor with a densifier. (Basically gets down into the concrete pores and fills them up so staining is prevented. After getting the floor where you want it, simply spray densifier on the floor and polish with a swing maching 175 rpm. This is a messy job but the end result can be fantastic, it's also time consuming as you do about a 10 x 10 area with each grit of pad. As well, if you have any serious spalling, best to fix with some self levelling cement and make sure and apply bonding agent to the old concrete. As well, degrease the old concrete before polishing, have found it works better.

[SylvanOwner]

I had a concrete floor/pad poured under my existing garage about 8 years ago and after waiting the suggested/required week or so I etched it and painted with an off-the-shelf product (Behr's maybe) from Crappy Tire or Home Depot and it's been great. There was a bit of flaking on the lip that sits outside at first and I was convinced it was all going to flake away and that I'd wasted my time and money but it never happened. My garage is used to store boat, bikes, portable ice hut and I have a workbench etc. so it doesn't get heavily used and doesn't get driven on but the addition of the paint has been very positive, lookwise and for clean-up (haven't had any major spills but oil doesn't penetrate or stain, wipe up with a rag....done).

 

Maybe my results were this good because the concrete was absolutely brand new but I would definitely try again somewhere else down the road should the need arise.

 

My Dad did the epoxy routine and while it does look nice I do find it gets very slippery when wet whereas my floor just from the slight roughness of the concrete doesn't seem to. I didn't use the fleck stuff (can't remember why), it's just straight grey concrete paint but I think you can also get little bits of material to spread on the floor when wet that embeds in and improves grip.

 

Go for it!!

[Billy Bob]

This might be a easier option that I did when I extended my garage.....I also used it on my new driveway 25 years ago....but the weather has worn it off the driveway but it's still GOOD on the garage after all these years...makes sweeping up easy and if you spill any oil, you can wipe it up with a paper towel.

 

http://www.bestmaterials.com/detail.aspx?ID=16103

[F7Firecat]

General service epoxy goes for 65 - 75 dollars a gallon, dont get the quick cure epoxy unless your under a timeline constraint such as a shutdown in a factory production area.

 

Too many people treat epoxy like latex paint and just get up and leave and have break........Mix it up, use small batches and get it down, if its kicking off in front of you your either too slow or mixing too much up in one batch. Small batch at the beginning for cutting in and your all set.

[cynmar]

Yes , we used the 2L. pail first for cutting in and perhaps we were being to picky with the cutting in. Found that using the roller to cut in went much better and the finished product looked better. Where we used the brush to cut in you can see the difference in colour because the amount of product used to brush was more than the coverage beside it put down with the roller. As I said, next time it's the 45 minute pot life stuff. I really can't imagine putting down this superfast stuff on any sizeable area. Can't backroll it at all or very little . Difficult job with the industrial stuff we used any way.