Lifetime Epoxy Floors: Beautifying Your Old Garage Floor

By Lifetime Epoxy Expert Guest Writer Henrick Stenson  ​

Premium garage floor coatings can help you put an end to that ugly, stained garage floor or that cold, depressing concrete that you can't stand looking at any more. You can place a beautiful new surface covering in your garage, complete with epoxy floor coating. A professional should be hired because the concrete surface must be properly prepared and the epoxy poured to just the right thickness or the whole surface may fail to adhere. (Though even the best of preparation won't guarantee that an epoxy coating will stick.)

The most common causes of epoxy failure are exposure to water and humidity. It's crucial that you wait an appropriate amount of time after washing and preparing the concrete, because concrete holds water much longer than other typical surfaces, and if you place the epoxy on concrete that still has water, you'll find yourself dealing with a large mess.

Closely related is humidity and most epoxy products come with a set of guidelines that indicate what a safe humidity level is for applying them.

Just like that water in the concrete, humidity acts as a barrier between the epoxy and the concrete, preventing the two from forming a cohesive surface. Cleaning the concrete is critical, because it removes other undesirable substances like dirt, oil, grime or dust that may prevent the epoxy coating from setting up correctly.

Fresh concrete is not the perfect solution either, because it contains salts and minerals that rise towards the surface as it dries. Newly laid concrete should therefore also be scrubbed and allowed to dry before applying the epoxy.
As you might have guessed, this is not a process that can be done is one day, and your professional installer will have a multi-step process he follows over several days in order to ensure that your new floor is properly installed.

On the first day, the installer should clean the existing floor and should remove all the dirt, dust, grease, oil, or other substances from the garage floor without leaving any trace behind. This may require the use of a pressure washer and/or special chemicals. The floor will then have to dry for an extended period to be sure all the water is gone.

The next step is to prime the floor with a specially designed floor primer. The primer is allowed to dry for about a day, and then the epoxy finish will be poured onto the floor. The thickness of the finish will depend on the product you select and will require one to two coats to ensure proper coverage. At last, you're ready for the sealer, the final step in your new floor. Epoxy may not be the easiest floor coating to install nor the cheapest, but if done properly, you'll find that you have a beautiful, easy to clean garage that you won't mind showing off.

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