Garage floor coatings

My Shop is nearing completion, and I am reconsidering garage floor coatings.

I do a lot of projects with commercial epoxy floors, and really can't justify something like that (cost prohibitive).  But I wouldn't mind something that looks decent and seals the floor.

Ive looked at the DIY residential grade floor coatings, and simply don't know enough about them. Lowes sells a 2 part epoxy with colored flakes which looks pretty good, but it bears the name "Craftsman".  As much as I love Lowes, I totally hate what they have done with the Craftsman brand.  It seems to be completely synonymous with cheap crap. My life is much better when I simply avoid anything with that name on it.

So what is out there?  What's simple and cost effective?  Any preferences or experiences (good or bad)?

You might have already seen these, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share:

[Floor coatings: An easy fix for a nicer, cleaner garage?]

[Which Garage Floor Treatment Is Best for Your Shop: Paint, Epoxy, Stain, Mats, Tiles or Polished?]

For fresh concrete, I might just consider a good high gloss sealer like Ballistix

Rust Bullet seems to get some pretty good reviews too

If you don't mind stepping up in price for something like a polyurea, then NOHR-S from Legacy Industrial, or SPGX from Armorpoxy both have pretty sterling reputations

I'd avoid floor coatings with flake in them for a shop you're going to work in.  When you drop a screw on the floor, it just disappears.

Avoid the flakes as mentioned above. My house had this coating when I bought it. There's a 10mm nut in this picture  

In reply to Spoolpigeon :

Kinda like "Where's Waldo?"...

Experience says even the top dollar commercial coatings break down over time and when they need to be stripped off its mega work involving machines that most people don't own and can't easily rent.

If/When I ever build a new shop I will polish the concrete and seal it, but won't do a coating.  I definitely would never do a DIY coating on anything that wasn't a flip house.

My current garage (rental) has some kind of cheap coating on it that looks like a 2-part epoxy, it sucks and was flaking in places when I moved in. I have the same stuff in the basement and it also doesn't wear well there, which is lower traffic than the garage. I suspect that the coatings are partly dependent on prep, but also, just don't seem to be chemically resistant. 

Last garage (rental) had polished and sealed concrete. It wore like iron and made spill clean up an absolute breeze. The owner of that house was a Coast Guard guy and had worked on/around boats and concrete docks/jettys his whole life. That was his decision, based on years of dealing with various paint and epoxy coatings. I would say it was a good one. 

When we finally buy/build, I will do polished and sealed concrete with mats/Racedeck in high-traffic areas. 

There is a reason the floors of Home Despot and Lowes are polished concrete.  Just saying

I have the polysporatic and flakes. My father in law does commercial garage floor coatings and has done all of my houses for me. I've never once had an issue finding a dropped bolt. Maybe it's the fine flakes he uses? 

I use my floors. Hard. I part out cars. Leak fluids. It does chip if you're rough on it. I still love the stuff and it really makes the garage feel like a room in the house instead of a garage. 

Bonus points is it makes taking pictures of car parts look nice.

Colin Wood said:

You might have already seen these, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share:

[Floor coatings: An easy fix for a nicer, cleaner garage?]

 

[Which Garage Floor Treatment Is Best for Your Shop: Paint, Epoxy, Stain, Mats, Tiles or Polished?]

Thanks, Colin. Helpful links to stories like that are a great part of this forum.

Purple Frog (Forum Supporter) said:

There is a reason the floors of Home Despot and Lowes are polished concrete.  Just saying

Part of the reason is cost. Commercial epoxy is extremely expensive. The job I am currently working on has 4735 SF. The epoxy floor coating will cost over $90,000.

HomeDepot doesn't have the same level of heavy traffic or chemical exposure, so it doesn't need an expensive floor like that.

I've done jobs with polished concrete too.  It will outperform most residential epoxies, but it won't outperform commercial epoxy. 
 

There's a reason the decks of aircraft carriers are coated with epoxy. 

This shop will be a workshop, but only for 1 person.  I generally work my floors hard, but not aircraft carrier hard. 
 

The catch on this particular floor is that it may also one day be a gathering space and expansion party area for the house.  If I one day stopped using it as a shop (or a future buyer), the space is nice enough to use as living space.  
 

I want to put a durable good looking coating on it now, before the concrete gets contaminated with my work.  I am VERY aware of the costs to deal with a floor that has been contaminated.

We did our garage last fall in polyurea from Legacy Industrial. Lots of flakes, but I don't do real automotive work out there, that's what my pole barn is for. So far so good, the stuff still looks like the day I laid it down. As always with any kind of coating on any kind of surface, prep is key. I rented a big concrete grinder to rough and clean the surface. 

If/when I ever do the barn, I'll probably do one of those "epoxy in a box" kits from the big box stores. The polyurea is awesome, but it was quite pricey, and I have more square footage to cover out there. I figure as long as I do the same level of prep, it should hold up pretty well. It doesn't get the kind of daily traffic the garage does.

My 800 square foot shop cost about $500 for epoxy...15 year ago.  It has held up very well, the only chips have concrete still attached to them, the epoxy didn't fail the concrete did.

akylekoz said:

My 800 square foot shop cost about $500 for epoxy...15 year ago.  It has held up very well, the only chips have concrete still attached to them, the epoxy didn't fail the concrete did.

This is what you need to see.  Not what it looks like in a year or 2, more like a decade or two.  My behr sealed and stained floor has most of the paint color lifted but nothing has stained the concrete.  Oil, grease, brake fluid all wipe off.  Pretty good for 30 years of use.

I dunno about the new coatings. But jensenman used to tell a story about his dad coming into a garage with a residential grade coating with sticky hot tires and it peeling right up. Prep is key. Did a few jobs with stonhard coatings for work. Serious prep work. 
 

im always a just seal it kinda guy. 
 

why do you want to coat it?  What is the purpose you are trying to achieve?

I just epoxy coated the floor of my new shop and if I had to do it over again I'd choose the polish and seal route. 

So depending on your budget I was looking into the Swisstrax Vinyltrax option for my basement. I have a moisture wicking issue where I get a very slight dampness downstairs 10 months per year, you know... when it rains or snows in Michigan. I have reset a channel to mediate most actual water that could accumulate (near water softerner/filters/water heater and the HVAC) and it directs to the sump very well now so I want to make the area "functional" as a dryish storage area. 

At nearly $8/sf it's pretty expensive but I am certain it will outlast the house. Plus there are similar click floors for much less but they do not look as refined. 

I originally had some sort of coating put down professionally, on my fresh concrete slab, by the concrete slab guys who did the work.  It was wonderful, but freaking DISSOLVED under gasoline. I don't remember what the coating was.

I had it all ground off by another company, and polished and sealed. They said that initial coating was pretty tough to cut through. The added something that sort of leaches into the concrete to harden it further, before they polished.

I absolutely LOVE the polished floor, and it is super durable.  Welding spatter/smoke/burn marks wipe off with my shoe.  It can still stain with oils, but it is pretty easy to clean up when you do spill because it's sealed.

Cost per square foot was about the same as really cheap carpet.

Saw a neighbors garage getting done while I was walking my dog, so I stopped and asked them for a ball park quote.  Almost $700/sq foot!  So $5000-6000 for my garage, which is double from what it was when we moved in, admittedly 15 years ago. 

I use a coating of oil, grease, and dust along with a liberal dose of grinder dust and weld splatter. It's actually a fairly uniform shade of brown. I know it's not much help but I use those because I don't want to have to care about the shop floor.

I want to use and abuse it without concern for the finish. I don't want to get mad every time someone drops a chunk of steel or spills some chemical on it. I also don't want to have to mop it or clean it very often. I hit it with a broom or leaf blower on occasion and call it good. 

This might be going a different direction but I remember a machine shop that had end cut wood something like this

non-slip, absorbs oil/gas, could be a cheap DIY.

In reply to triumph7 :

I think that was used a lot for factory flooring many,many years ago.

I also have a new garage with some fresh concrete and am trying to figure out what to do. Last time I DIY my garage floor with Epoxy and it came out great and inexpensive. If I remember correctly it was $300-350 for my 3 car garage 10 years ago. I was able to get the painter discount from Scott Paint which was acquired by Florida Paints. I highly recommend doing epoxy for the less expensive solution and spending the time for proper prep as others have stated. As well as doing a solid color without flakes to make it easy to find dropped screws. 

But I was really hoping to do something different like the below metallic flooring with high gloss in a white marble effect since it is a smaller garage with less light so I am trying to keep it as bright as possible. I want something that looks like this however I don't want to have to spend $2000 in materials plus there are so many out there I don't know which ones are the good ones. Last time Scott Paint helped me out a lot. 

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a floor like this for a reasonable amount?