RJ Realty Co. LLC

A client of mine recently bought his first home and one of his first home projects was modernizing the concrete garage flooring with an epoxy coating.

As we are all well too familiar with, our Wisconsin winters can easily blanket us with snow for a quarter of the year. With snow comes road salt and over those winter months our cars can pick up a lot of that salt. That snowy-salt-mixture can then melt off the car as it is parked in the garage leading to concrete cracking or damage.

I asked my client to share the process he followed and to help explain the benefits too. Here is what he had to say.

The epoxy flooring is what I would describe as a “rubbery paint”. It is applied and treated much like paint that would go onto the wall, but in the end, it hardens into a very hard rubber.

My goal for this project was to help solve two problems. The first was to stop both water and the wintery-salt mixture from finding ways both into the concrete pad and between the shared wall of the house and garage. The second was to help modernize the garage with a strong aesthetic that turns a basic garage into more of a workshop, which will positively help with home value.

The whole process consumes multiple days, but the actual “working” time is only a few hours at best. I have a 2-car garage that needed some help as it wasn’t in the best of shape. Someone had previously poorly applied epoxy years ago and there were a few cracks in the concrete.

A few important details before diving into this work are the safety steps. The epoxy can be messy and it will stick and harden to any clothing and/or shoes it touches. Additionally, there will be the use of acids and cleaners, so gloves and eye protection are required.

Essentially anything that is sitting or resting on the garage floor must be temporarily removed. Since the epoxy is meant to be coated on the entire floor, and in my case, cinderblock, surface, and it applies as a thick wet paint, it’s desirable to have an empty work area.

Once the garage has been emptied out, it is time to begin the cleaning process. A pressure washer helps, but a standard garden hose will suffice.

I started by using a strong bristle brush to aggregate the concrete surface to help remove small debris such as small rocks, yard waste, and any general dirt. This can then be followed up with a leaf blower to blow out any dust on the floor.

Once it felt “clean” to the touch, I used the hose to wash the concrete. I picked up a cheap broom-style squeegee from Home Depot to help push the water out towards the driveway too. I repeated this water-only washing about two to three times. The cleaner the surface, the easier the epoxy will apply.

It is of the utmost importance that the concrete flooring be free of rust, oil, and/or any other spilled stains. Epoxy is virtually immune to spills once it has hardened, but during the application process it will not mix with stains or even water.

Since I was using Rust-Oleum branded epoxy, I picked up a gallon of their Cleaner and Degreaser which should help remove any of those left-over spills. Even though I didn’t visually see any oil or rust, the cleaner did help lighten the surface after the fact.

The gallon comes ready to go and I poured it straight from the bottle onto the floor and then used a strong bristle brush to spread and scrub it into the concrete. This process took only a few minutes to do and after letting it sit for a few minutes, I washed out the garage with water once more.

One additional consideration before applying the epoxy is to fill in any cracks or deep rock chips in the concrete flooring. With a cheap scraper and some concrete crack sealant, I went around the entire garage and applied the “concrete in a bottle” to any decent sized crack or hole.

This Quikrete bottle tends to settle as it hardens, so I recommend applying far more than expected when using it. The scraper helps smooth out the wet concrete and prevents a concrete bead. The crack sealant takes 24 hours to fully cure and dry.

As I mentioned, my garage flooring wasn’t perfect to begin with. Someone along the way had already applied a poor application of epoxy and some of it was chipping and coming up, but large sections of it were intact.

Even with a strong paint and epoxy stripping acid, I couldn’t remove all the old epoxy. Luckily, epoxy can be applied over existing epoxy as long as it is not chipping.

Rust-Oleum recommends first apply a neutral paint coating over the existing epoxy covering. The purpose is to help give the new epoxy a clean and unified color/surface to stick to. This is an optional step, but skipping it, as I did, will result in possible lighter and darker sections of the new epoxy. Even after finding this out after the fact, I wasn’t upset that I skipped it and saved the otherwise added cost.

When applying the epoxy to the garage floor I would recommend a minimum of two people, best three people and to split the application into two sections of the garage.

For my application, I went with the Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield and chose the Universal kit which allowed me to select from a few colors. As I wanted black, I asked Home Depot to open the kit and add in the correct color code for Midnight Black, but Rust-Oleum says the kit supports colors from Red, to Blue, to Green, to a bunch of other flat-neutral colors.

The night before applying the epoxy, I opened the kit and opened the etching material. I mixed this etching material with water and, with a brush, scrubbed the concrete all over. This is ideal to ensure the concrete is as clean as possible for the application. After about 20 minutes of letting the etch work its magic, I washed it out with water.

The universal kit comes with a pre-mixed bag of white, gray, and black color chips that can applied to the epoxy while it dries to help “complete” the look. It, however, does not come with any sand. When epoxy gets wet, it can become slippery so I would highly recommend picking up Rust-Oleum’s sand add-in too.

With the garage floor completely dry, take the provided activator and mix it into the gallon of epoxy from the kit. From here, I recommend pouring it into a paint tray. Then, using paint brushes and a paint roller, it’s as simple as following the same practice as painting a wall inside a home.

The epoxy is self-leveling. Make sure every surface is well covered and blended. As it is being rolled onto the concrete, continue throwing down the provided chips into the epoxy. Throw down more chips than desired, because about 50% of the chips will come up over the next two weeks as the garage gets used.

This can be a messy process, but a rewarding one. That said, expect shoes and clothing to be ruined as the epoxy will harden to anything it touched. Including the paint supplies.

After 24 – 48 hours, the epoxy will be nearly cured and hardened. By then it can be walked on and it is safe to put back what was taken out. Do not close the garage door until the end of the second day.

On the third day cars can drive on the epoxy and the garage is ready to be used again! Now with a new protective, and stylish, epoxy barrier.

For around $325 I was able to completely seal and protect my entire garage floor from water, salt, stains, and from continuing to crack during the winter months. I’m happy I did the upgrade and I would highly recommend doing it too.