DIY epoxy floor?

Alec Moody · **Joined:** Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:02 am **Posts:** 299

Has anyone done a diy epoxy floor? If so, how well has it held up? Which products did you use? I am starting renovations on my garage/basement and the 60 year old concrete paint is tired.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Sun Oct 20, 2013 10:44 am

I did mine about 5-8 years ago (probably can find a thread here on it if you search). It was one of the kits you buy at a big box store. I think mine was a rustoleum kit. My personal opinion that surface prep is the key. I used various cleansers to scrub the floor as well as an acid etch. If you have soaked in oil then I think you may have issues regardless of the product you use.

I know you can find people online who only swear by more expensive kits, and I can imagine that they do provide some extra value, but mine has held up great. No pealing, and it wears well. It is slick when wet and can be scratched by sharp metal edges. It cleans easily. If you try (let fluids soak for an extended period of time) I think you can get it to stain a bit. But regardless I use my floor and I don't expect to look like a show room.

I cringe when I see bare concrete with oil on it now.

Richard

steve remchak · **Posted:** Mon Oct 21, 2013 10:19 am

I too have the Rustoleum product on my garage floor. 7 years and it has held up well but my garage is more for storage than working on or under cars. In the past there have been cars on jackstands in it (not mine per say) and I used squares of 1/2" plywood under the jackstands to keep from digging in to the floor.

Hot tires will peel the paint especially lower TW tires. I had a home builder tell me one time that he uses the Rustoleum product in his houses because it can be spot re-applied if the paint ever peels. No personal experience with that.

As Richard said, floor prep is the key. I actually sanded my floor with a buffer before washing and etching it. Also, you will need to remove most if not all of the old paint before you apply the new as the new coat might pull the old paint off the floor

Also, try to apply the new in temperatures above 55F or so.

Roger McDaniels · **Posted:** Mon Oct 21, 2013 10:47 am

As has been mentioned, surface prep is the most important thing. I have done a bunch of work with different coatings, and have seen several garage floors done wrong, and surface prep is generally the reason for a coating working well or poorly. I'd use a floor grinder and acid if I was doing my garage floor, but that floor is pretty well trashed.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:14 am

I was the second owner in my house and thankfully there was little or no oil on the floor. There was some minor paint spills that I managed to remove. Otherwise it was a relatively virgin floor and was easy to clean, etch and paint.

Richard

steve remchak · **Posted:** Mon Oct 21, 2013 12:36 pm

Second owner here also. There were some stains but my guy skimmed over them with a commercial patching compound to seal them out after the sanding, washing and etching was done.

If you are going to actually grind the floor be careful not to do it too deep or you will open a new can of worms. Grinding will open the pores of the concrete to permit much better adhesion. With existing paint you might want to consider renting a buffer with a scarifying head to remove as much of the old paint as you can. This will allow the pores in the concrete to open some also.

Dustin Fredrickson · **Posted:** Mon Oct 21, 2013 9:47 pm

If you have a spare month to dig into the details, check out garagejournal.net for more info than you ever cared to know about floor coatings.

When I did my new garage floor a couple years ago, I opted for EpoxyCoat, which is a 100% solids product (meaning if you put it on at 10mils, it dries to 10 mils). I also opted NOT to clearcoat it and did a heavy flake broadcast to give it lots of texture (helps hide dirt and provides some level of non-skid). By no means does this floor look as pristine as the day I put it down, but this garage has seen REAL car/metal/fab work and has had nothing but a mud/dirt path heading up to it for over 2 years, and get's cleaned much less frequently than it should. I'd send pictures, but this garage has become mission control for a major patio project and the floor is completely trashed with tools and dirt right now.

EpoxyCoat will cost a little more than other products - I think I used 2 full kits at something around $200/each for my ~740 sf garage, but that gave me a 1.5x thickness (something like 15 mils, I think). I also helped (former?) club member Brian Marks do the same product in his garage, and we put it closer to 20 mils in his. For a single application usage like we did ours, I wouldn't really want to try to do it thinner. One benefit is you can actually pick this stuff up semi-locally (or at least you could at one point), as SOME Lowes carry it. When I did mine, I found a Lowes in Charlotte that had it, which saved shipping costs since we were heading there anyway, but at the time the local stores here did not carry it. Unfortunately, one of the kits was bad (check all your parts before starting!), but EpoxyCoat took care of it right away and were great to work with. I would absolutely, positively, NOT hesitate to use the same product again - it's exactly the quality/cost/product characteristic compromise I was looking for.

The durability of this product is spectacular. I have had exactly ZERO complaints, but I went EXTREMELY anal on the prep, acid etching many times with increasingly strong dilutions until I got some notable surface "grit" exposed, then neutralized and thoroughly rinsed the acid away. I also filled my control cuts with leveler and all micro-cracks with caulk, which is critical to a great finish (I missed one small micro-crack and when the floor is clean and shiny you can see where the epoxy settled into that crack. After filling, I went over all the joints with a diamond wheel/grinder to make everything flush.

Like any plastic, the epoxy will burn through when welding (I keep some hardboard pieces around the garage to catch sparks), and can scratch if you try hard (drag something heavy/pointy or, say, spin a wet/sandy tire as you enter the garage), but dramatically increases the light reflection and cleanability of the garage. I rarely clean mine, so I've micro-scratched mine enough that it no longer really has that "shiny luster" look, but that really wasn't my goal.

So, after all that, I just realized that I did a writeup on some of this (along with my general garage build). See my garage blog.

RickyBeam · **Posted:** Tue Oct 22, 2013 4:54 pm

Roger McDaniels wrote:

I'd use a floor grinder and acid if I was doing my garage floor, but that floor is pretty well trashed.

There's been so much oil and "other" on that floor, even glue won't stick to it. But we've sold it, so it's not our problem. *grin*

Alec Moody · **Joined:** Fri Feb 15, 2013 9:02 am **Posts:** 299

I started my garage project this weekend but I will have wait until spring to do the epoxy. I think the paint has done a pretty good job of protecting the floor from oil. I might get a contractor out to look at it and give me an estimate and tell me what is feasible with what I have.

When you all did your epoxy floors, did it leave your entire house smelling like chemical? My garage area is directly below my kitchen and living room.

progress:

Michael Czeiszperger · **Joined:** Thu Apr 09, 2009 9:35 am **Posts:** 861

I did my garage floor with a big box kit last year, and despite the extension surface prep, the floor under the tires has peeled :-(

So... I tried prepping the peeled surface again, repainted, and let it cure for a month, but it peeled again.

I love the floor, and it makes it a heck of a lot easier to clean up spills, but just can't figure out how to keep the part under the tires from peeling.

Richard Casto · **Posted:** Tue Oct 29, 2013 1:16 pm

Alec Moody wrote:

When you all did your epoxy floors, did it leave your entire house smelling like chemical? My garage area is directly below my kitchen and living room.

It has been so long ago, I can't remember for sure. I don't "think" it did. I have other projects that are memorable as being "stinky" but the garage floor wasn't one of them.

Richard

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