Randy M

I hope you fellas had a great Fathers day weekend. I spent mine working on my garage. Actually I've been working on it for the last several weekends. We moved into a new house in January and I have been looking forward to this project since we moved in but my wife had other projects in mind that had 'prioritiy' over my garage project. The garage is about 800 Sq. Ft. and is two deep on the left side and also 5 ft. wider on the deep side. It won't house my fleet of exotics but it will just have to do for now....

Two weeks ago I had the walls and ceiling textured, then I sprayed both an off white. This last week I also switched out the four 100w incandescents for four 40 in. double flourescent fixtures. Huge difference the flourescent fixtures made. This Thurs I'm having cabinets and a bench installed also.

1.) Friday night I moved all the crap out of the garage. It is now in the house Then I taped down some clear plastic in one Sq.Ft. sections to check for hydrostatic pressure overnight. There was none. If there is any moisture on the inside of the plastic then you cannot epoxy your floor.

2.) Saturday morning I rented a concrete diamond grinder. I ground down the concrete a couple mils to get to the grain of the concrete as the surface had laitance on it and was real smooth. The contractor must of put some color into the surface because the concrete used to be a real dark gray. I hosed out all of the concrete dust before the next step.

3.) I took back the diamond grinder to the rental yard then I bought some concrete etcher at Home Depot. I don't think it was anything more than phosphoric acid. I sprayed water on all the areas before scrubbing with the 50/50 acid water solution. I worked section by section making sure to keep the concrete wet (you can't let the acid dry or you'll have to do it all over again). Then I pressure washed the whole garage out twice with a 2500 psi. pressure washer. I squeegeed out all of the water and allowed it to dry. After it was dry I checked for powdery residue by running my hand over the surface. There was none. If there is residual acid or concrete powder left on the surface the epoxy will eventually fail. I left the garage to thouroughly dry overnight.

4.) Sunday morning I get up and start to mix the product. The product I used was called Armorshield 1000 HS made by Sherwin-Williams (no affiliation). It is a high solids Epoxy that is one part color epoxy and one part hardener. It is NOT a water based product. (I've used both the one part water based Behr crap and EpoxyShield made by Rustoleum. The Rustoleum Epoxyshield is water based and came with only a pint of hardener per gallon. They both failed miserably at my two previous homes though I did not do the extensive prep work that I just did with my new garage.) I mixed gallon part A and gallon part B and one quart of reducer (for the first coat) for three minutes in a 5 gallon bucket with a mixer wheel attached to my cordless drill. After mixing you have to let it sweat in for a half hour depending on outside temps in order for it to brew and cultivate its magical adhering powers.

5.) I start painting the relief cracks and the inside perimeter and curbing of the garage. I chose not to use crack filler on the relief cracks as they would inevitably crack again. I finish the first coat by working one section at a time always keeping a wet edge to prevent roller marks. This stuff is literally glue and is challenging to work with. You have to be conscious of time as it has a pot life of four hours at 77deg. After that it's worthless. I only mixed what I thought I would use. I let it dry for about 9-10 hours.

6.) Second and last coat. Mixed part A and part B again without the reducer this time as this is the coup de grace. This time its very very thick. I do the perimeter again before rolling it out section by section. By midnight I'm cleaned up and done. I couldn't sleep last night as I kept smelling the fumes. I think it permeated the whole neighborhood....

Fully prepped before paint:

Randy M

In the back you can see where I didn't paint the wall. I'm having lockers, cabinets and a 7ft. bench installed on Thurs. After:

Randy M

The product I used:

Randy M

I made sure to keep goofy out of the garage:

chris walrod

Great project, definately on my list to do..

You did a very thorough and proper job!!

Looks awesome!!

Randy M

Thanks Chris. One thing I forgot to mention is that I can't drive my cars into the garage for about a week. Light foot traffic is okay after a day. I think it takes a whole month for it to fully cure.

Agro1

Looks great Randy, however I'd like to give RaceDeck a try. Did you look into it ?

Randy M

I think Skip here on Rennlist posted some negative comments about racedeck. Something about the tiles cracking under a jack or jack stands. The epoxy I used is supposed to be 2-3 times harder than concrete.

Agro1

Good to know....thanks, and congrats - it looks fantastic

jdoc7

Randy,

Looks great! I wish I had used a diamond grinder during my prep. I'm sure it makes a HUGE difference. A few months after doing my floor with Epoxyshield, it started lifting. Oh well, this ain't my dream garage.

Agro1

The trick with any epoxy coating is Prep and cure time. Skimp on either and it will most likely lift.

Randy M

I had my garage door open yesterday afternoon. After it was drying for about 3 hours the sun came over my roof and started shining on the garage floor. I could see the heat coming off the surface it was so hot yesterday. I hope that didn't harm the dry and curing process.

Mark in Baltimore

Randy,

Your floor looks great! I wish my garage were as clean and uncluttered as yours.

Randy M

It doesn't usually look like that. All the crap that was in the garage is now in the house till this coming weekend. I've got a double bed and rolls of carpet remnants in the dining room

amfp

Randy,

Is the floor slippery when wet ?

Great job. My garage floor is one project I have in queue, so your write up was helpful. Thanks !