Well I wasn't sure if I should ask this on here but since I saw the thread on trouble lights I thought why not. I have just completed my new shop and before I get it all full of my sacred **** I need to paint the concrete floor. Just wondering what has worked well for all you guys out there.
Don't paint it if you do fabrication work and use a MIG welder, plasma cutter, torch, grinders etc. I painted my floor with epoxy paint and it looked great. After a couple of years you see every spot where flying sparks have hit the floor leaving tiny burn marks.
Try going to the Garage Journal the HAMBs sister site for garages. They have a whole section on flooring and every imaginable type of flooring is discussed.
Dont paint it unless its a show room. If you work there dont paint it... It will NEVER last no mater what you put down even "garage floor paint" is junk and will peel and is slick as **** when wet or stuff spills on it. DONT do it. seal the concrete and go to work
Too many times this has come up. A little research beforehand would have revealed a world of concrete color and hardener options that you mix right into the concrete for a very nice and durable colored floor that would never need re-finishing or be affected by welding sparks etc. My father had a red colored harderer -color powder mixed into the concrete for the floor of his shop and it turned a beautiflul deep brick red color. A very nice floor. Painting or coating a floor is at best a compromise especially if you plan on welding ,cutting or rolling heavy items on equipment with heavy duty steel wheels.
When using HD-015 you still have to degrease and etch the surface prior to applying. I do alot of welding/cutting/grinding and this product has withstood plenty of hot metal without showing any signs of burn marks.
This. It will look like **** when the inevitable oil, coolant, gear lube and welding sparks stain/mark it. I myself like the look of a greasy, stained shop floor.
I'd just put a clear sealer on it. I work in a warehouse, and the old warehouse had nothing on the floor and you could not sweep it with a dust mop type of brooom, it would leave half the dirt behind. our new warehouse has some sort of clear sealer on the floor and it sweeps up great. I think this stuff would be found in a janitorial type of business. painting it with some color to look pretty seems a bit goofy to me.
Yeah, I read all the advice from others both here and at the Garage Journal. On my new floor, after waiting 30 days for it to cure, I went to Menards and bought two kits of epoxy grey. I scrubbed the floor and then etched with muriatic acid. Scrubbed it again and rinsed three times. Rolled on two medium coats. This was three years ago. Heavy welding...MIG, TIG and cutting torch do leave their little bit of marks behind. But I learned to put a piece of heavy fire-resistant matting under the welding bench. And I also use the same material under my ch***is or whatever. No problems. Still looks good...to me. I think the preparation is just as important as the product, maybe more.
I have always used concrete stain on New garage floors and every few years I purchase another 5 gallons and apply another coat of stain. The hot tires do not peel it off like they peel off paint. The floors are done a machine color grey and I also do four feet up each wall with the same color just in paint and then a red four inch strip all around the walls and the rest of the walls are painted semi gloss white so that when you put on the fluorescent lights at time the light bounces off the walls and makes it much brighter. Each time I do this the shop looks brand new again for another few years. Jimbo
I gotta agree. Any of the current coatings that see a lot of fabrication cutting and welding, chemicals like brake clean, heavy duty degreasers, dropped hammers, steering boxes, etc will not hold up. I was going to coat my new 50 x 14 slab, but decided the work of coating and trying to protect it was not worth the effort.
Hello, Polished concrete flooring is the best looking surface if done right. But, first, the concrete has to be fairly pristine to begin with, then the prepping work is half done for you. The idea of using what you have seems simple to us. We have liked polished concrete flooring, since we saw a counter in a commercial store made in concrete, including the polished top. The rest of the store was totally polished and it glistened to perfection. No external coating or additives, just one good clean surface. But, since the store was fairly new, the concrete surface was also new, too. We have been in the store through several other owners after 20 years and it still looks great. A little scuffing, but no dings, scratches or cracks. Sure, there are some wear patterns, but that is to be expected. The concrete looks as if it was poured, just yesterday, when we are able to go into the store. We are also considering a custom poured concrete finish counter top for our kitchen remodel, but it is a toss up at this point. We have always seen the epoxy/polyurethane coatings on garage floors. But, old school us, liked the normal concrete floor with all of its grey, shiny grey and some staining from various maladies or tool drops. We even cleaned it one time and polished our concrete floor. It did not last very long. It was tempting to do it ourselves, but the one thing I remembered our friend’s happy face when he was finished rolling out the floor paint was the completion of the project. But, we were not going to tell him that when the garage door is/was closed, the epoxy paint was about an inch or two beyond the door. Like a strip of fleck paint on concrete. My son wanted to get the epoxy coating to do it ourselves, as sold at the big box stores. It was like painting a wall, except the wall was on the ground. We watched a neighbor do his garage floor and it was ok. it was not the catchall coating out of the can and his application was a little off, too. So, we convinced our son that if his family cars were kept up with maintenance and drove well, the garage floor was secondary and not a bone of contention. When he moved to a larger house, the previous owner had a business in the third car section and had the whole floor professionally done in a shiny cement look with no blems anywhere. It was a little slick if any moisture was on the surface. So, care had to be taken when getting out of a rainy, wet car. Jnaki My wife and I finally saw the options from our garage cabinet installation company with their heavy duty cabinets and they offered various floor coating options. We decided to go the whole route and had them come in and install the heavy duty cabinets and drawers. Then they brough out their crew for the concrete prep and within a few days, a new floor was added to our finished garage. The photo was taken after a couple of days of rain and we can see the tire paths on the surface. They get swept off or if left on too long, a wet mopping is used to get those tread patterns off. The tall two door wide cabinets as well as the full deep drawers are all above the concrete edging that is standard in all garage builds from custom garages to standard tract home builds. these new cabinets are mounted above the concrete curb edging to allow a cleaning under the cabinets/drawers, etc. The cabinets are not the sagging variety from the big box stores. (those cabinets are ½ inch thick fiberboard with white external surfaces. Upon installation in earlier times, it was nice looking, but the weight of the “stuff” on the shelf made it sag. The weak link…) The new company cabinets are all ¾ inch thick walls/sides/back+top. The bottom is 1 inch, as are every shelf in the whole new system. We have placed the same paint cans, the cartons of food, water and other garage storage stuff and not a single sag in any of the shelves, even two door wide opening tall cabinets. The counter is not the hammering projects surface, but that is way behind our needs. If a project requires heavy duty wrenching and hammering, it gets done on the concrete area in the side yard. In order to keep the counter pristine, we have several commercial cutting boards to use as a base for such projects. Everything has a place and it is mostly hidden, looking like an addition to our drywalled house surfaces. Now, our cars have a nice place to call home and during the allowable pandemic visits times, when our immediate family visited for a short while, we all sat in a nicely finished room, called the garage. Even in the middle of winter with some heaters to warm up the place. Yes, the floor is an epoxy compound and is not slippery when we get out of our “rained on” cars. I accidently spilled a can of Lacquer Thinner on the finished floor. It cleaned the surface dirt and what ever marks were on the surface, without damaging the thickness or coating of the floor. It is always a shiny place and takes a mop or two after driving in a wet car to get the tire tracks and drying water spots cleaned up. YRMV “Our line of Epoxy / Polyurethane Coatings will make your garage floor look better than new. Your garage floor will be transformed into an attractive, easy-clean surface. We offer high quality epoxy floor coatings that are perfect for entertaining. Our coatings are impervious to automobile fluids, household chemicals, hot tires and pet accidents.” “Installation of our “Granite-look” and Standard Solid floor coating takes three short days. We do recommend that you keep your cars out of the garage for an additional five days after installation is complete. We shotblast/beadblast every floor before applying any coating. This allows the epoxy to penetrate fully into the cement.”
I find transmission fluid makes a good coating for concrete. It's easy to apply, it simply drips from a TH 350 (or TH400 equally well), spreads easily via gravity, and it keeps sanding dust down really well. You're welcome...
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