Decided to coat my garage floor in the spring and finally got around to it last month.
I’ve wanted to do my floor for a while, I knew it was only a matter of time before the salt started to tear up the garage floor. I had a few quotes for the epoxy chip floors and they came in around $5000-6000 and I just couldn’t justify spending that much.
I preferred the look of the clear over ground concrete, which the companies I had quote me couldn’t fathom why I wouldn’t want the chip and basically said they couldn’t do it. So, I researched how to do it on my own. Went with a clear polyurea, 2 coats, anti skid in the second coat, not slippery at all.
The salt must have seeped further into the concrete and caused a chemical reaction because when I ground down and first applied, those white areas weren’t there (as you can see in the pics below). It’s obvious as it’s only where the cars are parked so it’s definitely something to do with the road salt. I don’t really care, as I was going for the more “old shop” look anyhow, but I can see some people would not like it.
I rented a floor maintainer and a diambrush disk from the Depot. Wet the floor and made a few passes in a cross hatch pattern. Just enough to get the top (cream coat) layer off. It was more exhausting than I thought. That maintainer constantly wants to go left, so you’re fighting it the whole time.
Agreed, I underestimated the grinding process. Figured it wouldn’t be too bad, I always see janitors using that floor polisher with no issues, seemed easy, until you put that grinder wheel on there. And then the mess, holy shit what a disaster that slurry was. We just had our driveway recoated… wife was like WTF!!!
I used a power washer to get most if it to the edge of the driveway, but it left a bunch of residue. I bought one of those spinning hard surface cleaners that attached to the power washer and that did the trick.
I used water to grind down the surface of the concrete, as that’s how the diamabrush works best. I let it dry for 72 hours and used fans, so it was dry before coating.
Use this guy. Seriously the best customer service I’ve ever had. Owner of the company (Justin) called me directly and walked me through every step of the process when I was going to start, we were on the phone for 20 minutes going over everything. I can text him anytime. He also answers every email directly.
