House Rebirth

Garage Floor

Posted by Cuthbert Returned , Monday, December 13, 2010 7:04 PM

So after ripping out the ramp we were faced with a ripped up and half painted garage floor covered in all manor of forgotten filth. Here is a close up of one particularly awful area. This bit of grime and filth laughed at any cleaner we tried on it.

After wandering about Lowe's and researching countless options realizing we may go broke fixing this issue... we settled on a  two stage paint on enamel called quikrete. It has reasonable reviews most of which stating as long as you follow instructions it holds up. The first step was to scrub off the garage floor with orange-clean...in the midwest its called pure-strength but it took all the nastiness off the floor. After letting that dry we used the first step of the process which is an etch. We poured it out and rubbed it into the surface like the directions said. This stuff bubbles when you put it on unpainted concrete. After this its a matter of mixing up the base epoxy and rolling it onto the floor. We used a standard roller with an extension handle we bought at our new favorite weekend haunt Lowe's. I swear the entire staff knows us by name now. The first coat is fun but you really need a second person to do the sprinkles. Luckily Amanda had fun with that process. The package claimed that the floor dries for light foot traffic after 24 hours and car traffic after 72 hours.  Sure enough the next morning, exactly 24 hours after we had painted the floor, I had a flat tire on the Contour and where do you suppose the air compressor was......yup in the far corner of the garage. So in stocking feet I tip toed cautiously out onto our newly painted floor...there was no need to be cautious it was completly dry. Sometimes Murphy is a jerk anyways.



After the first layer dried we had a second shiny layer that also adds some powdered rubber to the epoxy so the floor is not slippery when wet. This second coat went down white and dried clear. When that was done the room was starting to look much less like a forgotten back alley. We started day dreaming of storage solutions and workbenches and places to park the cars out of the soon to come crappy weather. It must have looked different because our neighbor commented on the floor and was curious about the steps involved. Amanda and I are convinced some day the neighborhood may have us carted off to the looney bin for what we are doing to this house but we are having fun in the interrum. We also had to get the dog to inspect and approve the goings on.




This last shot is a bit out of timeline but it still serves as proof we can get two cars in...