A relative is thinking about epoxy-coating the floor of their attached garage (built in early nineties). Hoping the CC hive of knowledge will be able to help to recommend some specific brands that worked well. Thanks!
I don’t have a brand name suggestion…but I know more than a few people who have this and they love it.
I haven’t done any floors. My experience is limited to bathroom countertops and kitchen island and kitchen countertops. I used a gallon epoxy sold in Home Depot, and I’m happily satisfied with the results. I forgot the name of the brand, but I don’t think epoxys are brand dependent. Now the weather is much colder, especially on the floor, I’d be sure to use heaters to raise the temperature, as well as using the epoxy after heating it enough to be nice and runny. I used a portable heater after mixing the epoxy in a gallon glass jar.
I’d suggest perusing the Ferrari Chat, Rennlist (Porsche) and/or the FordGT Forums and search on garage or epoxy coatings. I used to be up on the brands at one time, but not as much recently.
High-end owners of autos spend large sums of money on their garages.
Thank you all. No high end vehicles here, just some desire to make the place neater (and use one bay for a home exercise studio). Will poke around those car forums.
We had ours done so I don’t know the brand. Just know we love it…
By the way, is the garage concrete surface? If so, might want to move the project time to warmer months? Even when the epoxy is heated, the cold concrete surface will harden it very quickly, posing some unexpected challenges in otherwise simple task.
@BunsenBurner I didn’t mean to insinuate the epoxy floor was for a fancy expensive car. But having been interested in collectible cars in my youth, I know the folks that do own Ferraris, Porsches, McLarens, what have you, do spend huge sums of money on their garages too, especially their garage floors.
I believe they even manufacture a heating system for garage floors just like for bathrooms and elsewhere in the home.
Thanks, @TiggerDad. I expressed the same concern about workability and long curing times of epoxy in colder weather and also the stench that would definitely get into the house.
@sushiritto - no problem! Your suggestion makes perfect sense! Yes, there ARE awesome garages out there. We almost bought a house with one of those! The owner was a big Harley fan and wanted his hogs to have a nice place to park.
An alternative to epoxy is garage tile. I used tile from costco, which was a simple snap-together heavy duty plastic. You can get varying degrees of quality, but the costco tile has served my garage well for the past 15+ years. It’s a good option for older/dirty concrete floors since no prep is required.
For epoxy, surface prep is even more important than the quality of the epoxy. For an old floor, you need to properly clean and etch the surface, which typically means an acid treatment, which in turn means lots and lots of ventilation.
My garage floor has two levels. I used the garage tiles on the main surface where the cars are parked. There’s a small step-up surface that leads to house and I used rustoleum garage-floor epoxy for that part. It was quick and easy, but I did it over the summer when it was warm and the floor was “green” or new, so I didn’t need to acid-wash. That part of the concrete developed a crack which shows through the epoxy (I’ve sealed it with caulk), but any cracks under the tiles are completely hidden.