Garage Updates: Paint and Epoxy

The next step in our garage makeover was to paint the walls. I am fairly certain they have never been painted... well at least not since the house was built. We picked up one gallon of Valspar's " Antique" (which is used in out house as well) and painted the walls of our garage one afternoon. 

 Its amazing how big of a difference a coat of paint can make!

Now... the floors. They were ROUGH!

It' is a little hard to tell from the pictures above but our garage has two different slabs of concrete. According to our neighbors, the original owners ( before the dealers) owned some type of food truck. Well the home owners association would not allow him to park the food truck in the driveway and I guess the truck was too tall to make it under the garage door? Anyway, he cut the original slab to make a "drop down". Of course, when he sold the house it was required to fill it in leaving us with this. 

After painting the garage, we really wanted to tackle an epoxy coating for the floor. Tim was super nervous about how the epoxy would adhere to the new concrete since it chipped pretty easily. After doing a TON of research online, we decided to go for it!

Here is how we did it: 

1)      Remove everything from the garage.

2)      Spot treat any oil stains. We purchased a specific degreaser to use on the stains first.

3)      Etching- We purchased a specific spray bottle for this. Just a generic bug sprayer with a pump. It made the process much easier since you can control where you are spraying. It is best to do a small area at a time. Once you spray, use the bush room to scrub the surface to bring out any surface stains.

 After spraying the entire floor, you must RINSE, RINSE, RINSE. We used a large push broom to get the water out of the garage. We repeated this rinsing step several times as you should not have any trace of the acid when you start the epoxy.  If you garage floor now feels like fine grit sandpaper, you are ready to move on to the next step. We however, still had some stains showing through. We decided “better safe than sorry” and chose to repeat the etching process a second time before moving on to the epoxy.

4)       Allow the floor to dry completely, at least 4 hours.

5)      Next you are ready for your first coat of epoxy. Mix the can of hardener with the can of paint that came in the kit and allow to sit for 30 minutes, not in direct heat. We purchased this kit. 

6)      Coat your floor. I trimmed around the edges while Tim rolled the rest of the garage.

7)      Allow the paint to dry overnight. Don’t walk on it or drive in it.

8)      The next day, you are ready to apply your second coat. If you want a flat finish, you would add your nonskid additive into this step. We wanted a glossy finish which required additional steps and therefore we did not have to add the additive at this point. Again, after cutting in, Tim rolled the floors. I followed behind him adding the decorative chips that came in our kit.

9)      Allow the floor to dry. If you want a flat finish… you would be done.

10)   We wanted a high gloss finish. So we used Rustoleum’s High Gloss clear coat kit a few days later. It is a very similar process. You mix the hardener with the clear paint. Wait 30 minutes . Right before using we added our non skid additive. Again, I cut in while Tim rolled. I will say that this step was harder because you can’t always tell if you have completely covered an area because it is clear.

11)   Let dry 24 hours before walking on, 72- before you park on it. Tim made me wait a week before allowing my car back in the garage “just to be safe”! 

Here is what things look like now:

The transition is still there but much less noticeable

The floor turned out SO much better than we were expecting. It was a long process to complete but not nearly as difficult as we made it out to be! It is very easy to maintain and we LOVE the look of it.
Because I could not resist....it is not unusual to find my husband doing this:

I married a neat freak! 

A few words of advice. Epoxy is messy!! Buy cheap rollers, cheap brushes, and disposable liners. We threw everything away rather then deal with the clean up. We even threw out the 5 gallon mixing bucket. They say the project can be done in a day to two days.... it took us 4! It does help to have fans going around the clock. Epoxy also lets off a ton of fumes so the fans serve two purposes: helps dry and vent the smell.... And no, I did not complete this project while pregnant! ;)