Garage Floor Epoxy Coat - Comprehensive Step-By-Step Guide | Builds by Maz

hey guys welcome back to builds by Maz today I'll be showing you how you can transform your garage floor from this into this adding an epoxy coat to your garage floor is a great way to elevate the whole Space plus it adds a layer of protection I'll walk you through every step of the process including two different methods for preparing the concrete so you can get great results just like this let's get started [Music] thank you the first thing to know about putting down an epoxy coat is that it's 90 prep work the successful adhesion of your epoxy coating almost entirely depends on how thorough your preparation is I'll demonstrate two of the most commonly used methods but either way the first thing you need to do is get everything out of your garage that's touching the floor if you're not going to be grinding the concrete this would also be a good time to remove anything that's stuck to the floor for example this tape and I also scraped off some big chunks of wood glue go ahead and get everything swept up and then we need to perform a moisture test this is extremely important because if you have moisture in your concrete floor then the epoxy layer will eventually come off to prevent that you would need to put down a moisture barrier before the epoxy an easy way to perform this moisture test is to cut out some plastic sheeting and tape it down to the floor leave it for 24 hours if you pull it up and it's dry like mine was you're good to go but if there's any water or condensation you'll need to put down a moisture barrier here's some good footage of what my garage looked like beforehand I've got tons of stains and Spills from all my projects over the years there are some big marks from the tires all kinds of things and the first thing I'm going to do is use a good Degreaser over the whole floor I mix some Zep de Greaser with water for the manufacturer's instructions then I wet the concrete and scrubbed everything thoroughly with a degreaser this is especially important if you have an older garage and there's been a lot of time for oils or greases to build up on the surface this is basically stage one of the cleaning process and we're really only trying to work things out of the surface after giving everything a good cleaning I power washed all the Degreaser out of my garage and then squeegeed out any excess water up until now all these steps have been needed no matter what but now I'm going to switch gears and focus on the two main methods of concrete prep starting with concrete grinding this is by far the more labor intensive method but also the most successful the first thing you're going to need to do if you're going to be grinding the concrete is to cover up everything that's remaining in the garage ideally you want to bring everything inside that you can whatever you're leaving out there make sure you cover up I can't overstate how much dust is going to become airborne from that grinder and every single surface that's exposed is going to get covered with a layer of concrete dust even behind all this solid coverage things still manage to get Dusty I rented this flooring Pole from Home Depot as well as this diamond brush concrete prep attachment it's almost like a giant flap disc that uses Diamond studded blades to assemble you just need to fit the disc onto the bottom of the flooring prep tool and then turn it to lock it into place this concrete dust is horrible for your lungs so make sure you have a good respirator with proper filters before you start grinding first that's a simple machine it actually took me a few tries to get the hang of things and here is my first attempt yeah not the best and then on my second try this thing just pushed me backwards straight out of the frame I'm not a small guy and I was really struggling with this thing it was just pushing me backwards and I thought I must be doing something wrong finally I realized that if you move the handle up or down it moves the whole machine backwards or forwards finally I got the hang of things and I was able to control it with much more precision and without expending all that effort it just takes a little getting used to you can see what I mean now about all this dust and after just this first pass I swept up almost a full dustpan full this is how the surface looked after my first pass and you can see it's a little spotty all the lighter areas are what's been properly ground down whereas these darker areas are still the original surface and will need another pass the best thing to do is move the machine side to side while slowly moving forwards or backwards it's important to remember that the diamond blades only go around the outside of the machine so if you were just hold it in place it would grind a donut pattern into the floor so it's important to always keep it moving I split my garage up into four different quadrants I go over one section in One Direction sweep up all the dust and then go over that same section in a perpendicular pattern this helped me keep my grinding uniform and ensured that I didn't miss very many spots this is how the first section looked when I was finished and any areas that I miss like this I just went back and spot grinded them here's a bit of real-time footage for you so you can see how long this process actually takes it can also get quite loud so make sure you wear some earplugs this really can be a long and tedious process in my garage took me a little over five hours so be prepared to spend a full day on this in an effort to speed things up I put some cat litter on the top of the grinder to help give it some more weight you're not really supposed to do this but I did see that it helped a little bit as I said if you choose to do the concrete grinding method it's by far more labor intensive but you'll get much better results since you're actually revealing a brand new layer of concrete the epoxy will adhere much better and give you great lifetime results here it was at the halfway point and you can really see the difference I'll also mention that you can wet grind this concrete that'll help alleviate your dust problem but then you're going to have to deal with a bunch of concrete sludge I recommend Googling wet for dry concrete grinding to learn more about the differences but in general wet grinding is going to be much more difficult to clean everything up with this method I was able to sweep up the majority of the dust and then vacuum anything else that was remaining also note that most shop vacs can't handle large quantities of concrete dust so you either need to sweep up most of it beforehand or buy a specialized attachment specifically meant for this one limitation of the big four prep machine is it can't get all the way to the edges and you'll see where I push it as far as I could up against the wall there's still an area around the border that needs to be grinded off one option is to use a handheld angle grinder you'd replace this flap disc with a concrete grinding attachment then you just take it all along the edges of the garage grinding down the little section that was missed by the big machine only reason I'm not doing this is because I wanted to show the acid etch method this is a packet of powdered acid that actually comes with the epoxy Shield kit to apply this start with a plastic watering can and it needs to be plastic if it's metal the acid can actually start reacting inside the watering can and that's not what you want you mix it with water per the instructions and then make sure you give everything a good stir I slightly wet the concrete beforehand and then came back with a water acid mixture you can actually hear the acid working it almost sounds like a slight sizzling noise I really only needed to do this around the edges of my garage but for demonstration purposes I'll just show you how to do the whole thing you need to keep the concrete wet throughout this process so I found it was easiest to just spray everything with water and then go over it with the watering Cannon acid be sure to thoroughly scrub the acid into the concrete paying extra attention to the areas where your car's tires sit this is the most high risk area for the epoxy floor because of something called hot Tower pickup this occurs when you park hot tires in the same spot day after day and as they cool it can start to cause some peeling of the surface layer this is why it's so important to do extensive prep work and here are a couple examples of the hot tire pickup which can occur if you don't adequately prepare your concrete anyway back to the process make sure you thoroughly rinse the whole garage and squeegee out any excess water to begin the drying process to be clear you only need to do either concrete grinding or acid etching there's no need to do both and I'm only doing it here for instructional purposes concrete grinding is definitely the preferred method but it takes a lot longer and is more expensive because you have to rent the grinder if your garage floor is newer or doesn't have as many stains you might be okay with acid etching but I recommend you research both methods before picking one here you can see all this dust that would have got into my stuff it's not for this plastic film it's super dirty so again make sure you cover as much stuff as possible your garage floor needs to be extremely dry before you can put on any epoxy so if you do the acid etch method that requires a wash make sure you let everything dry for at least three days you also need your floor to be extremely clean so I originally wet vacced it while it was still drying and here I am using the blow function on my shop vac to get rid of any remaining dust this is probably Overkill but I even gave the whole garage floor a pass with my regular indoor vacuum this vacuum is not meant to handle concrete dust and I had to thoroughly wash out the filters afterwards but here you can see just how much came up so here is my garage nice and dry and clean with most of the prep work done all that was left was to tape off the edges here's everything you'll need to epoxy your garage floor starting from the right we have our paint tray mixing stick roller cover long handled paint roller paint brush a drill mixing attachment three large five gallon buckets the actual epoxy kit some anti-skid additive epoxy Flakes and just one more small bucket one more thing that's optional but highly recommended are these spiked sandals these things will allow you to walk on wet epoxy without messing it up all you do is screw in all these little spikes into the bottom side tighten them up and then they go on over your regular shoes I wasn't sure if I would need these but trust me when I say they'll definitely come in handy I bought this Rust-Oleum epoxy Shield kit that was meant for a two and a half car garage it states it covers up to 500 square feet and I went with this dark gray color the square footage is overstated by about 50 percent so I bought an additional one car garage kit this was shipped without the box but this is what it looks like I could only find the one car kits in the light gray color each kit comes with its own flakes the dark gray has a mixture of black gray and white whereas the light gray also includes some Blue Chips here you can see the difference side by side the two-car kit comes with two bags the one car kit comes with one bag and I also purchased an additional chip bag separately the amount of chips you use is entirely up to you but I feel like the coverage is a bit sparse unless you buy extra bags I went ahead and just mixed both colors I kind of like the blue in there and I thought it ended up looking pretty cool overall this is two-part epoxy and taking it out of the box you can see at the bottom there's part A and on the top there's Part B they're separated by the sealed line down the middle what you would normally do is roll the bag up and it would burst this seam in the middle mixing the two parts together and you can mix them within the bag if you only have one bag that's fine but I have two dark gray bags from the first kit as well as one bag that's light gray so they're two different colors what I'm going to be doing instead is mixing all three of the part A's together and then separately mixing all three of the part B's together very carefully cutting along the middle seal you can separate the two sides making it easier to handle I added the clear part A to one bucket making sure to squeeze out every drop these kits aren't cheap after all I then did the same thing with the part B this is the side that's actually going to have the color in it even if you're using two bags of the exact same color I still recommend using this method it's a little more tedious but it's the only way to ensure you have a truly uniform color there have been some complaints that two bags are the same color sometimes don't match up exactly and here are some photos I pulled straight from online reviews you can clearly see the differences in color and this can occur even with bags from the same kit the only way to be 100 sure that this won't happen to you is to use this method that I'm showing and mix everything beforehand the part A really just needs a little stir but the part B is the one that I use the drill attachment and really made sure that everything was homogeneous after a few minutes of mixing I was happy that this was all one solid color I'm going to be pouring this in two different batches so I took notes of how much there was of the part B and the part a the third five gallon bucket is what I used for half of the part B followed by half of the part a I then covered up the reserve buckets just to make sure no dust got inside of it if you won't be using a clear coat this would be the time to add the anti-skid additive I added half to this batch which will really help the floor from becoming too slick I then thoroughly mixed everything together there's a really handy chart in the instruction manual which will tell you how much time you have once you mix Parts A and B together depending on the temperature I also roughly split my chips in half and then prepared my roller a great way to do this is to use a piece of masking tape all along the edge of the roller and then pull it off which will get rid of any dust nibs or debris finally after all that work it's time to get to the fun part I started off by brushing about three or four inches all along the border this will give me some margin to work with when I come back with my roller this is also a good time when you can brush any vertical surfaces once I brushed about half my garage I came back with the roller you want to get a good solid coat on the applicator and then roll it on in a w or M pattern you want to slightly overlap the previous section As you move along always maintaining a wet Edge all right I mentioned earlier that I think the square footage coverages are a bit overstated on these box kits I've got an average sized garage about 400 square feet and I think if I had just gotten the Two and a Half Car Kit I would have really had to stretch this epoxy thin getting that extra one car kit was definitely worth the expense I was able to more liberally apply this epoxy and I could really give it a solid coat backtracking over each section like you see here I decided I wanted to test out these Spike shoes and let me tell you they really do work there was not a single marketless epoxy and I was really impressed next thing what was probably the most fun part of this project which was throwing the decorative chips you want to throw these straight into the air and let gravity randomly disperse them I know you can't see it from this angle but I was throwing them almost up to the ceiling getting the vertical sides was a little more tricky and I kind of had to just throw them sideways make sure you're doing one small section at a time it's important to throw the chips while the epoxy is still wet so they'll stick in place I rolled over the previous section by about six inches working quickly before anything had time to dry here's a better view of how to throw these flakes I've seen a lot of videos where people throw them outward from their waist but this is so much better you really get a random disbursement and it looks very natural [Music] once I finish the first half of the epoxy I combined the remainder of Parts A and B mixing them together and adding in the rest of the anti-skid additive from there it's the same process as before brushing on the edges and vertical surfaces and then following up with the roller you want to make sure you're overlapping at least the last six inches of the previous section maintaining a wet Edge so that it all dries uniformly so ideally you want to stop the chips before you get to the end correctly this is a really enjoyable process you see progress really fast and we were able to epoxy the whole garage in just about two hours once you get to the end and you're starting to run out of space those Spike shoes really come in handy we threw on the remainder of the flakes and then gave it a full 24 hours to dry before coming back and removing the masking tape make sure to wait at least three days before moving your cars inside so the epoxy can fully cure here's a close-up of what the anti skid out of there looks like it's all these little sand like granules these really help with traction because when this floor gets wet it becomes super slick so if you live in a snowy climate these are a must-have the final step is to vacuum or squeegee off any loose decorative chips and then you're done I absolutely could not believe how well this turned out I was a little bit skeptical using the Rust-Oleum of Foxy Shield because it's a really budget friendly option but it worked out great thank you thank you can also add a clear coat over this which will add a nice gloss an additional layer of protection but be aware that some of that exposure can cause it to Yellow over time which is why I chose not to add one one other thing and probably the only downside of this project is if you drop a small screw or nut or something it can be really tough to find because it'll blend right in it's a small price to pay though and I've been so happy with these results I did this project almost a year ago and the epoxies held upgrade plus being able to walk Barefoot into my garage and not get my feet all dirty has been awesome I hope you've enjoyed the video and that you feel confident enough to go tackle your own garage floor thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Builds by Maz

Views: 1,572,073

Keywords: epoxy, garage, garage floor, garage floor epoxy, garage epoxy, epoxyshield, rustoleum, rustoleum epoxyshield, garage floor coating, epoxy flooring, epoxy garage floor, how to, rust-oleum epoxyshield, diy epoxy garage floor, builds by maz, diy epoxy, how to epoxy garage floor, garage flooring epoxy, garage transformation, easy epoxy, budget epoxy, simple epoxy, diy, concrete prep, acid etch, concrete grinding, epoxy instructional, concrete paint, garage paint

Id: _gbEM164mVE

Length: 18min 44sec (1124 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 13 2023