Sweet Garage Flooring

When it comes time to choose your garage flooring, there are many different options from which to decide.

Garage floor paint will provide you with an excellent garage floor coating, and will also give you some nice color as well.  This paint is designed to keep your garage floors nice looking, in addition to protecting it from chemical stains and other damage.  There are quite a few brand names and types of garage floor paint out there, so we’ll quickly take a look at a few of them.

Rust-Oleum EPOXYShield Epoxy Garage Floor Coating

Rust-Oleum’s EPOXYShield garage floor coating is available mostly in browns and other tans.  To some, this may be a deterrent, since many people purchase paint because they want to add some colors to their garage floors.  However, if brown is okay, or you simply do not care what color your garage floor is, than this Rust-Oleum might be good for you.  It comes available in a kit that is designed for a one car garage, and even includes an instructional DVD for installation.  It is, like most garage floor coating, waterproof and stain resistant as well.  The reviews on this particular product are great, which really speaks for the ease of install.

Weatherbeater Epoxy Garage Floor Coating

Generally available for a little less than Rust-Oleum’s product, the Weatherbeater Epoxy Garage Floor Coating offers most of the same promises, minus the instructional DVD.  It’s not rated as well, but does come with decorative chips to accent your garage floor.  Without the instructional DVD, it’s very likely that the poor reviews are coming from people’s inexperience at installing garage flooring, so you may want to take those reviews with a grain of salt.  Speaking of salt, Weatherbeater claims that their garage floor paint is resistant to salt, as well as other chemicals such as gasoline and oil.

Quikrete Epoxy Garage Floor Coating

Quikrete is probably the most popular garage flooring paint, and is available in over 40 colors.  They also include color flakes, like the Weatherbeater, if you would like to add such accents to your garage floor.    Their formula is twice as strong as concrete, and they claim that it is the toughest garage floor finish available.  It is a bit more expensive than the other two, however, and reviews are hard to come by.  Sometimes no news is good news, though, and you can bet if this hadn’t worked on many garage floors for whatever reason, there would be plenty of negative reviews.

Although probably the hardest to install, especially correctly, garage floor paint is definitely the cheapest option of all.  If you are willing to do the work yourself, you can easily coat an entire single car garage for under $75.  Considering the money you’ll be saving on repairing concrete in the future, that’s a heck of a deal.  There’s no doubt that there are many other reasons to choose an epoxy garage floor coating.  Just make sure you check out all your options first, before deciding, since it would be rather difficult to undo.

Why is it that there’s always something wrong with the house?  First the dishwasher, then the refrigerator, then the furnace and, now your garage floor has developed cracks.  Great.  I bet you never thought about garage flooring as something you needed to maintain, did you?  It’s cement.  It’s on the ground.  It’s simply not something you thought about.  Until it started cracking.

Hopefully you did this search well before the cracks started, but if you didn’t, Quikrete can be used for both a garage floor coating and a repair substance, depending on the situation, of course.  The best part is, as far as epoxy garage floor coatings go, Quikrete is both cheap and easy to work with, making some things a do-it-yourself process that you really didn’t think you could do.

First, before you can begin your epoxy garage floor coating, and before you can understand what Quikrete is, it’s important to understand exactly what concrete is.  Concrete is a blend of water, cement, and some sort of aggregate, such as sand or gravel.  It’s used for building material in so many places because the components are everywhere and, more importantly, cheap.  It’s also moldable and can even come in different colors, which makes it very versatile and useful in all sorts of projects.  It’s also very tough; resistant to rot, decay, fire, wind, water, extreme temperatures, and wear-down by animal traffic.  Unfortunately, though, it’s hard to work with and very slow to fully dry.  That’s where Quikrete improves upon traditional concrete.

The biggest advantage for Quikrete when it comes to choosing an epoxy garage floor coating is that, depending on how much is used, it can set in as little as ten minutes.  Even the average job is dry between 20 and 40 minutes.  It’s available in small packages for repairing either a garage floor, or even a sidewalk or driveway.  It’s also easy to find in bulk in case you want to use it for larger jobs, such as a garage floor coating.  Once you get it home, you can prepare, set, and finish your job all in one day.  This stuff removes a lot of the cost and time associated with home repairs, and if you don’t want or can’t afford heavy equipment or a contractor, then Quikrete is a godsend.

Quikrete is much easier to mix than traditional cement.  That being said, there are still some challenges when it comes to mixing quikrete, and you’d be wise to do some research on the matter before you start.  If you’re no stranger to home repair, I’m sure you’ve noticed that the product instructions, while helpful, aren’t always everything you need to get the job done.  Either way, whether you’re using it as a repair substance or a garage floor coating, Quikrete just might be what you’re looking for to simplify that nightmare of a project.

One option you may want to consider with your garage is garage floor paint. With garage floor paint, you can put a nice, shiny coat on your garage floor which will make it easier to clean as well as more attractive. This is a good option if you have a garage floor that’s already been coated with something that has either worn off or is undesirable. Most garage floor paints can be used on top of other epoxy paints or sealants, as long as they are clean and free of any contaminants. Since garage floor paint is typically pretty thick, there’s no need to match colors or anything like that.

Including preparation, many garage floor epoxy coating kits can take as little as three hours to apply. This is comparable to other garage floor solutions, like tile or mats, yet is quite a bit more permanent as garage floor paints are epoxy based. Also, this estimate is for a normal garage. If your garage is quite large, then expect the process to take longer, of course.

Before laying your garage floor paint, the concrete must be prepared for the epoxy solution as per the paint manufacturers direction. This applies even if your garage floor is brand new and has never had so much as a bicycle parked on it. The cement still has to be prepared if the garage floor paint is going to adhere to it as it should and provide you with a long life and beautiful finish.

If the concrete is brand new, as in has just been laid down and still has that darker color that indicates it’s not completely dry, even if you can’t carve your initials in it, then you’ll have to wait a bit before you can begin preparing the garage floor for painting. Most paint manufacturers recommend waiting at least thirty days, but be sure to check with the instructions before starting, as different kits will have different instructions. If you’re not sure when the cement for your garage floor was laid, you may want to get with the contractor and find out. Either that, or you could always wait thirty days from move in to apply the garage floor paint. Since the garage floor will have to be prepped, regardless of condition, there’s no harm in using the garage until the thirty days has passed. That being said, it probably wouldn’t be wise to pile half your belongings in the garage, as that would surely deter you from applying the garage floor paint when the time comes.

Choosing to use an epoxy garage floor coating will be a decision that you will be glad you made later on down the road.  Not only will it look nicer, but your garage floor will also last far longer, with maintenance becoming a non-issue for many years to come.