The Garage Makeover Blog by Slide-Lok

DIY Epoxy Garage Floor Coating Install in Tucson, Arizona

10/3/2019

DIY Metallic Epoxy Garage Floor Coating

This garage floor coating was actually a DIY (do it yourself) install by the homeowner about 3 years ago. We were finally able to get some more photos from the customer and decided it was time to share this post. The customer provided us a video timelapse of their floor and the rest you can see in the photos above and below.

DIY Floor Coating Prep Methods Vary, Not Always The Best

Concrete flooring preparation is the most important step of any floor coating project. One major difference between a professional contractor and the DIY weekend warrior is that weekend warriors tend to skip steps or perform sub-par work. That's not to say that weekend warriors are intentionally lousy at home improvement, but often because the tools and experience needed to do a professional job are often expensive and extremely inconvenient for most DIYers. This DIY floor coating is an example of that, granted certain circumstances were met which probably meant skimping on the prep wouldn't be the end of the world knowing the age and wear of the concrete floor as well as how the homeowner planned to use their floor.

At the time of this garage floor coating application the home had only just been built a few months prior. Since the floor was only a few months old, with zero damage and no stains on the concrete, the homeowner elected to skip our suggestion of renting a diamond grinder. They pressure washed the floor using a cleaner and degreaser, and then rinsed the floor out several times. This is not our recommendation for flooring prep, we absolutely 100% always recommend abrading the floor for the absolute best bond that will last a lifetime. That means we only recommend floors be diamond grinded or shot blasted. Acid etching and pressure washing are not ideal prep methods for various reasons, but the simplest is that they just don't prepare concrete in the same way as a mechanical abrading device. When concrete is properly prepared the pores are opened up and allow our coatings to soak in for an extremely strong bond with the concrete. Suffice it to say, this floor has been down for just over 3 years now with zero failure points.

We will always recommend you use the best preparation methods available to you. However, the feasibility of this homeowner renting a truck and diamond grinder was just too much an inconvenience. In this case we were more than happy to explain alternative preparation methods such the way this homeowner prepared their floor. Slightly better flooring prep would've also included acid etching. Acid etching is really hit or miss depending on how much acid you use and if you properly neutralize the acid. Failure to completely rinse out the floor can result in coating failure where unneutralized acid is more than capable of eating away at the floor from underneath. Just keep this in mind on your next project and weigh some of the pros and cons. When in doubt hire a professional or drop us a message, we're always happy to provide free advice to homeowners.

Is It Easy To DIY Epoxy Garage Floor Coatings?

These homeowners DIYed their epoxy garage floor coating over the span of two weekends and it turned out extremely well. This wasn't even a simple solid gray floor or decorative chip floor, they attempted a solid color metallic with acetone effects - WOW! Metallics typically require more finesse when it comes to manipulating the roller just right. These DIYers knocked this floor out of the park!

The homeowners researched DIY floor coatings extensively and decided to contact a couple of the more well known floor coating brands, we were included among that list! After a string of back and forth conversations, they decided that using our 100% solids cycloaliphatic epoxy floor coating was going to be their best option. They did not want the cheap consumer grade epoxy from home improvement stores which are often riddled with common complaints such as poor adhesion, peeling and flaking within 6 to 12 months. We talked the DIYers out of using a polyaspartic polyurea coating because it is FAST curing and not forgiving for novice applicators. We recommended that the concrete garage floor be prepped using a diamond grinder or shot blaster, the homeowners thought that was too much extra work and were okay with their minimal prep method figuring our commercial grade epoxy would outperform the home improvement big box store specials. Accepting the risk for minimal flooring prep and being coached on how to work with our epoxy floor coatings they began their project in the late summer of 2016.

The DIYers started their prep on a Sunday afternoon. They began by using a bristled broom and brushed cleaner and degreaser across the entire floor. Then, they pressure washed and rinsed the floor several times to ensure no cleaners were left in the floor. Now, the thing to remember is that 100% solids epoxy is not compatible with water. They let the floor dry until the next weekend to begin coating with epoxy. The following weekend, Saturday morning, the DIYers applied our Epoxy 100 thinned to about 70% solids so that it would penetrate and perform as an adhesion promoting primer. Lastly, they finished with 2 subsequent coats of our copper metallic pigments mixed into our 100% solids epoxy.

Due to the hot summer climate in Tucson, AZ, the epoxy coating was tack free relatively quickly compared to other times of the year. These DIYers worked hard and managed to accomplish 3 epoxy coatings in one day! This epoxy isn't normally a 1 day system, it is typically applied over 2-3 days requiring 6-8 hours in between coats. For faster turn around times of 1 day in all temperature conditions, with recoat times around 60 minutes per coat, consider hiring a professional applicator that uses our polyaspartic polyurea floor coating.

"Thanks to Slide-Lok for superb technical support and advice our floor ended up looking better than we imagined. We even called them while we were doing the floor saturday morning with questions and they were quick to help us out over the phone. Thanks to their support we were able to DIY our garage floor without any major hiccups.

We've received so many compliments from our neighbors on our floor, we think we probably have the best looking garage in the entire neighborhood. We are so glad that we picked your product over the DIY kits at our local hardware store. We read what seemed like hundreds of hit or miss reviews, we didn't want to chance it with a cheap or inferior product." Kim and Lou, Tucson, AZ, Homeowners

Easy DIY Garage Floor Coating

If you ask Kim or Lou, they'd tell you that DIYing their epoxy floor was easy, but also more work than they anticipated and a lot sweatier than they imagined. Just over three years later and they finally got us the rest of the photos of their garage floor. Their epoxy garage floor still looks amazing after all this time. They use one garage for storage and park their Nissan Maxima in the other. They're actually planning a move up to Phoenix, AZ, and intend to have their new garage floor professionally coated this time around.

DIY garage floor coatings can look as good as professionally coated floors, however the devil is in the details. Our 15 year limited lifetime flooring warranty only applies to professionally applied floors, because proper concrete preparation is night and day different when it comes to adhesion and longevity of a floor coating. Regardless, the homeowners were happy with their DIY floor and they've been turned on to our products for their next home too!

DIY Epoxy Garage Floor Coating Photos

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Slide-Lok Garage Interiors has helped tens of thousands of homeowners realize their garage dreams since 1977. Most homeowners elect to hire an authorized Slide-Lok dealer to perform their garage renovations for them, occasionally we get a homeowner interested in a DIY garage project. Our cabinets have been DIY friendly since 1977, featuring our patented dovetail design making cabinet assembly a breeze, floor coatings on the other hand are less DIY friendly as they typically have a learning curve associated with them. We always recommend you read all technical and safety data sheets when working with chemicals. We also recommend that you be aware of proper preparation methods, failure to prep is the reason many DIY floor kits fail prematurely. In fact, many of our authorized flooring dealers stay busy removing DIY epoxy floors and then installing a polyaspartic polyurea coating over professionaly prepared concrete.

We have authorized Slide-Lok garage flooring dealers all over the US and Canada that can transform your boring and dull garage into your dream garage. Every garage tells a different story, let us help tell yours.

So what are you waiting for, get your FREE ESTIMATE today: Contact Slide-Lok Garage Interiors.

Keywords: DIY, garage, floor, coating, epoxy, polyaspartic, polyurea, flooring, how to, do, it, yourself

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