Did some garage floor epoxy. Came out nice!

[joelster]

I learned a lot along the way. Feel free to hit me up with any questions you may have. Our garage is 49'x24' separated into 2 sections. One section is about 12'x24' and the bigger section is 36'24'. We don't do any heavy work in the big section, we just mainly use it to store cars. The plan is to make it look like a showroom, put up a small table, chairs, TV and fridge.

One of the pads was in rough shape with some deeper cracks. I'm not about to shell out $4k to have new concrete poured so I just smoothed it out the best I could.





I originally used a concrete resurfacer. It said you could apply it 1/16th of an inch to smooth out any pits or cracks. What a joke this crap was. Went on great, but when it dried it was weak as hell. I could scuff my foot and it would disintegrate. I ended up removing about 90% of it. I then put a concrete primer down and allowed it to dry.

The epoxy I used was Rust-O-Leum Epoxyshield. I used the 2.5 car kit. If you buy it at Lowe's or Home Depot they can mix it into a variety of colors. I chose Teal Green.

Here's the first section going down, with some flakes added:



The directions say to do apply it in small sections. After looking at the results I should have applied it to bigger sections to get the color more uniform. You can see some lines in the epoxy. It's hardly noticeable now with the clear on.



After the epoxy dried (2 days) I ended up putting 3 gallons of clear on ($93). I put the first gallon on with a roller. I used 1 gallon for both pads. I didn't like the finish it had from the roller. It had an orange peel look. So I bought 2 more gallons, but this time I used a squeegie. Here's the result:





A week later we did the other 2 pads in the main section, and then used 1 gallon of clear and squeegied it on. After 4 days we parked some of the cars in there. I put pads under the wheels just to be safe for now. The results were amazing:

[sbubbaklein]

looks great

[HOJO]

Really nice job, looks good.

How did you keep the clear from filling up the relief cuts in the floor?

[swampcritter]

That floor looks amazing , that IROC is beautiful also

[joelster]

Originally Posted by HOJO

Really nice job, looks good.

How did you keep the clear from filling up the relief cuts in the floor?

Some of the clear ran into the expansion joints, but not enough to concern me. The clear is not very thick. A gallon doesn't really cover a lot of sq/ft.

The IROC is my gf's. We're looking into getting another one soon!

[witenite]

Looks like it turned out great. Nice job!

[Jayjellyfish212]

Nice job! What was you total cost per sf. Minus the mishap with the skim coat of cement layer? I have a large 2.5 bay I been leaning on doing the floor in epoxy. Also how long was the cure time for putting the garage back to use?

[hkittrell]

I had that same IROC back in the late eighties.

[joelster]

Originally Posted by Jayjellyfish212

Nice job! What was you total cost per sf. Minus the mishap with the skim coat of cement layer? I have a large 2.5 bay I been leaning on doing the floor in epoxy. Also how long was the cure time for putting the garage back to use?

The epoxy kits were $109 each. I used 3 gallons of clear on the first 2 pads and 1 gallon of clear on the 2nd set of pads. Each gallon was $31, so $124 in clear. Add in brushes, pans and a squeegie. I spent a total of around $400ish for the whole project, roughly 36'x24' with some cabinets that stick out eating up some sq/ft. So it's really about 450-500sq/ft that I applied the epoxy to. $1.25 per sq/ft, roughly.

Cure time says 24 hours and you can walk on it. I really didn't want to push it. I let it cure for 3 days before I went into the area and walked on it. No sense in rushing it, when you've gone that far. I still have pads under the tires of the cars just to be safe.

Oh, just to be clear, I did NOT add the anti-slip additive that you can buy. The floor is very slippery when it's wet. If you plan on working on an epoxy coated floor, I would get the anti-slip additive.

[Jayjellyfish212]

Originally Posted by joelster

The epoxy kits were $109 each. I used 3 gallons of clear on the first 2 pads and 1 gallon of clear on the 2nd set of pads. Each gallon was $31, so $124 in clear. Add in brushes, pans and a squeegie. I spent a total of around $400ish for the whole project, roughly 36'x24' with some cabinets that stick out eating up some sq/ft. So it's really about 450-500sq/ft that I applied the epoxy to. $1.25 per sq/ft, roughly.

Cure time says 24 hours and you can walk on it. I really didn't want to push it. I let it cure for 3 days before I went into the area and walked on it. No sense in rushing it, when you've gone that far. I still have pads under the tires of the cars just to be safe.

Oh, just to be clear, I did NOT add the anti-slip additive that you can buy. The floor is very slippery when it's wet. If you plan on working on an epoxy coated floor, I would get the anti-slip additive.

Cool and thanks for the info. Is the anti slip additive more like a light sand type texture? I can see if wet could be a bit slick with high gloss clear. Curious if it just adds a light sand texture. Cost seems reasonable too. I was leaning to do a plain light gray or light beige so I get good light reflection and brightness. I think I'd be doing up to my cabinets and tool boxes only . It would be a nightmare to move them all.. lol. I'd probably be looking at a floor surface area of 24w x 18d mainly where cars are parked only. What clear did you use?

[joelster]

The clear was called SEAL-CRETE or something like that. It was right next to the Rust-O-Leum stuff on the shelf.

[01pewterz28]

Gonna be doing this to my garage I want a black floor in my garage.