Shiny New Epoxy Garage Floor
If you’d like to know what it would be like to drive onto your own personal auto showroom floor, you may want to give thought to an epoxy garage floor. This type of floor is not only durable, but it’s also very shiny. Imagine seeing your own car in the floor’s reflection, be it either a brand new car or your old ‘76 beater that’s seen better days. An epoxy garage floor coating is viewed as the best in garage flooring to many, and for very good reason. Epoxy garage floors last a very long time, often as long as the concrete itself, though you will have to sacrifice quite a lot of time, and there is a bit of difficulty. Every once in a while the garage floor paint will have to be refreshed with a new coat, but other than that, the initial install covers most of the work. Epoxy will not move or crumple under car tires, which is a problem with some other garage floor coverings.
Tough Epoxy Garage Flooring
Epoxy is an extremely tough, very long-lasting coating that is painted on concrete. It’s different than normal paint, though, in that it will resist oils, grease, and lots of other things that would dissolve and ruin ordinary paints. This is why it’s suitable for garage floors, as regular paint would obviously not be able to handle such things as motor oils since most regular paints are oil based. When two oil based substances come in contact with each other, they’ll try to coalesce which, in the case of motor oil and paint, would destroy both. Grease would have the same effect as it is also oil based, as would any break fluid, power steering fluid, parts cleaner…the list goes on and on. It’s amazing just how petroleum based our lives and products actually are. That’s the beauty of epoxy based paints, however. Their resin base keeps them from being susceptible to the damages of oil and oil based substances.
Old Epoxy Garage Floors That Shine
Old garage floors like to shine, too! Just because the garage floor has some age on it doesn’t mean it can’t be pretty. I know, pretty and garage floor typically don’t go together, but they do when there’s an epoxy coating involved. Epoxy is able to last so long because it grips the concrete on a microscopic level and actually seeps down into the cracks, as opposed to other garage floor solutions that just kind of float on the top layer, be it dust, dirt, or concrete. Cleaning an epoxy coated garage floor is simple - generally just power wash it. This is because it doesn’t absorb all those chemicals, and therefore doesn’t stain. Most chemicals will simply float on top of the epoxy coating, making it just a matter of wiping them up or pushing them out. Be careful though that you don’t accidentally poison the earth around your garage. You’re probably used to picking up chemicals with some sort of absorbent and throwing them in the garbage. Just because the chemicals no longer hurt your garage floor doesn’t mean they won’t hurt the environment, especially groundwater.
Epoxy Garage Floor Coatings In Pretty Colors
Epoxy coatings usually come in gray. It’s a very shiny, very attractive gray, but it’s still very gray. Now just because it’s gray doesn’t mean you’re not going to notice a marked improvement over your cement garage floor, because you certainly will. However, lots of people would rather add some sort of color, and it is possible. Unfortunately, many times your local hardware store won’t have anything but gray epoxy coatings. In fact, it’s not uncommon for these hardware stores to tell you there’s no such thing as colored epoxy, that it’s all gray, which is simply not true. Sometimes it does take some looking, but epoxy garage floor coating kits are in good supply on the web, and usually a lot cheaper than the hardware store. Odds are pretty good that, compared to other things, you’d have no reason to return a garage floor kit, and the ability to return things is my biggest worry when it comes to buying on the net.
Will Your Concrete Garage Floor Take An Epoxy Coating?
As opposed to pretty much every other type of garage floor, epoxy does require quite a lot of preparation. In the end, some concrete just won’t be able to take a solid epoxy coating. Even if the concrete is determined to be in good enough shape for coating, it has to be cleaned and etched which is usually very labor intensive and tedious. There really is no part of laying an epoxy garage floor that is for the faint of heart…or maybe I should say faint of back. Those of us who aren’t in the best shape physically may want to opt for something less time sensitive, like garage floor tiles that you can finish whenever you feel like and not have to worry about them setting in the correct order, or garage floor mats that can be moved around to where they’re needed. However, if bank account is up to paying someone to do the job, or if your body is up to doing it yourself, an epoxy garage floor coating is definitely the way to go.
Eppie likes to write articles about her garage floors and epoxy garage floor coating.
