Garage Epoxy Floor

Garage Epoxy Floor Process

Everyone wants a nice garage for their cars, tools or a place to play. We all rush out to buy those kits you see in the box stores with great anticipation and hopes, do everything right it says to do on the box only to find a few months later it might peel up.

Concrete floors and garage floors are one of the toughest substrates to paint and the reason is the unforeseen conditions under and the abuse it takes on top of the floor. We may not know there is a moisture issue under the floor or water pressure pushing up, we cannot control the movement of the home, no epoxy or paint can withstand that and not to mention the hot tires pulling in and out each day.

Knowing these things can happen and the floor is not impenetrable to any of these things happening are called expectations, as long as you know what to expect and understand things can happen you will have a successful project and a floor that should last. Yes, you may have to do it again, yes it may need maintenance and cleaning or another coat added. These are things to expect.

The start of any good floor job is cleaning the floor of grease and dirt, you will need a degreaser or emulsifier to remove the grease from the concrete, if you do not clean the floor properly or before prep you could push the grease even further into the concrete which will speed up any paint failures.

After cleaning we need to get the surface ready for the coating. This could be by chemically (acid etch) or mechanically (diamond grind) depending on the coating your using and condition of the floor that will tell you which manner will work best. 

Now the floor is ready for coating and hopefully we have decided to use a professional company to do this or at least are using a higher end product. The epoxy has very clear directions on mixing, sweat in times and or time to get it on the floor as well as the number of coats and thickness it needs to be applied.

Make sure to follow these specifications to the letter or again you could end up with a failure of the coating. 

Now you have a choice, are you adding decorative flakes or an anti-skid additive into the epoxy? Now is the time to do it, this will all be subjective on who is putting the flakes down, you can get different looks from different applicators, you can also choose a sparse flake or cover the entire floor solid with flakes.

Once you have your flakes down, the next day is the time to add your protective clear coat, we like to use top of the line products here as this is the coating protecting the top side of your floor.

If you follow all the directions, use good products and have the proper expectations you can have a great epoxy floor too.