Cheapest way to finish a garage concrete floor

[bandito]

I am building a garage and I have poured my concrete floor. I would like to coat it before getting any stains on it. I was looking into epoxy floors but the price for quality stuff is expensive and it seams the cheap stuff is useless.  I looked a bit into paints but they don't seam to hold up as well as epoxy.  The finished would have to hold up to oil, gas, cleaners, tire markings, uv protected and as some of it will be outside the weather.

[lthenderson]

I long ago learned just not to care about all that stuff and leave my garage floor as it is. Some of my friends have epoxy coated garage floors and it appears to me when I'm over that they spend more time fretting over keeping them clean than actually getting stuff done on top of the floor.

More towards your question, I would never paint a garage floor. You will forever be painting it regularly to cover up all the tire marks and scuffs put in it just from normal garage wear. Epoxy is about the longest lasting fix but it is much more expensive. It also doesn't prevent tire marks but it does make things easier to clean up without staining. Another option is to use some sort of rubber large format tile made for garages that snaps together and protects your floor. It is cheaper than epoxy but to me always seems like you are covering up a perfectly good floor that will last forever with one that will eventually need replacing.

[BudgetSlasher]

I agree with lthenderson. Unless you have some atypical case (such as your garage is really your living room and instead of art you have a singer rebuilt classic 911 in the middle of the room) to me garage floor coatings are a waste of time. Honestly, I see a rust mark from the plow here, and an oil spot there, a stain from god knows what was sitting there all signs of used garage.

To answer your question, from the folks I have know with garage floor finishes only the good epoxies have really held up. But they are not invincible; the tires will still leave marks, that shovel you dropped might nick the epoxy, that road grit the tires bring in and the occasional rock in the treads will eventually leave superficial scratches.

If it were me, I would simply get the garage floor with a smooth finish and clean up any oil and gas spills as they happen (you'll be doing that with epoxy anyways).

A quick note from a buyer's prospective. I've seen too many epoxy garage floor used in an attempt to cover up a problem or "embarrassing" staining and a few failures due to improper prep work. That when we were shopping for houses every epoxy floor I saw was a concern as to what was being hidden or how well the prep was done. 

Finally you hit the nail on the head with the rubber floors, a concrete floor is "a perfectly good floor that will last forever."

[Syonyk]

"Leave it and invest in a bag of cat litter for oil/fluid spills."

If you're going to epoxy it, pay to have it done properly - that's something where the skills to do it properly are worth paying for, given friends who have both done it themselves (doesn't hold up terribly well) and have had it done (seriously invincible finish).

But I agree with "Why?"  I've never gotten that upset about a bit of oil on concrete.  Toss a cup or two of cheap clay cat litter on it, grind it in with your heel, let it sit, brush it off, and you can't tell the difference without looking really closely.  It's a garage.  An oil stain isn't the end of the world.

And keep some large cardboard boxes for laying on when you're working on stuff.  Or buy a wheeled creeper.  Way cheaper.

[bandito]

The garage is more of a man cave than a garage thus I wanted to do something for the floor otherwise i wouldn't be doing anything to protect the floor.

[Syonyk]

The garage is more of a man cave than a garage thus I wanted to do something for the floor otherwise i wouldn't be doing anything to protect the floor.

Yet it's going to be subject to, I quote, "oil, gas, cleaners, tire markings."

Dude.  If you're going to be working on cars, it's a garage.  Let it smell like one.  Or do what we've done for decades and put down some cardboard before you change the oil.

[misshathaway]

I had a bare concrete basement floor. I painted it with generic box store concrete paint. It is much easier to sweep. Next summer I will do the same for the garage because the most-used entrance to the house is the door from the garage. Sweeping the garage isn't just cosmetic. It helps keep leaves and dirt out of the house.

[BudgetSlasher]

The garage is more of a man cave than a garage thus I wanted to do something for the floor otherwise i wouldn't be doing anything to protect the floor.

In your mind, what constitutes a man cave? Especially one in a garage?

[shawndoggy]

I did the Home Depot Rustoleum Epoxyshield kit when I moved into my new (to me) house three years ago and it's holding up well.  There are a couple of things I wished I'd have done a little differently in 20/20 hindsight (most importantly doing a third coat over that one "light spot"), but I'm real happy with it overall. 

At my last house we paid for a professional job.  It looked nicer than my DIY job, but it was like 10x more expensive too.

I clean the garage out once a year (leaf blower, full sweep, hand broom expansion cracks, spray with pressure washer) and it always looks amazing right after.

[aasdfadsf]

I did a Rustoleum professional grade epoxy on my previous garage floor. The kit was on sale for $100 at Lowes or wherever. I'm pretty happy with it and there's been no hot tire lift-off that I'm aware of (the property is now a rental). I also did a polyurethane top coat. This cost an extra $150 and provides a lot more protection.

If you go this route, make sure that you tint the epoxy in some earth-tone that doesn't show dirt and mud so easily. I used a blue color that makes every bit of dirt show. And if you do a top coat, put the anti-skid stuff in the top coat, not in the epoxy. The other big mistake I made was trying to strip the old paint that was peeling in many places off of the concrete. I bought three or four different strippers and spent tons of time and breathed in lots of fumes for something that didn't really work and didn't even matter. A pressure wash would have sufficed. The epoxy stuck just fine to the paint where it still existed.

[kidmont]

I did a Rustoleum professional grade epoxy on my previous garage floor.

Rustoleum worked great for me as well.

[bandito]

I did the Home Depot Rustoleum Epoxyshield kit when I moved into my new (to me) house three years ago and it's holding up well.  There are a couple of things I wished I'd have done a little differently in 20/20 hindsight (most importantly doing a third coat over that one "light spot"), but I'm real happy with it overall. 

At my last house we paid for a professional job.  It looked nicer than my DIY job, but it was like 10x more expensive too.

I clean the garage out once a year (leaf blower, full sweep, hand broom expansion cracks, spray with pressure washer) and it always looks amazing right after.

I contacted some of the high end epoxy floor installation companies. They recommended the DIY budget kits from Home Depot and Lowes as the don't sell to the public. They said not to use the etching process but instead to use a diamond blade floor maintainer which is simply a concrete grinder.  That way the concrete pours are exposed to the epoxy which makes the best possible adhesion between the both of them.

[Sibley]

Is your garage floor made of glass that it needs to be so carefully protected? It's a GARAGE. They get dirty and stained and junked up. you'll be better off in the long run getting rid of all the crap that you don't need and will end up storing in there.

[bandito]

Is your garage floor made of glass that it needs to be so carefully protected? It's a GARAGE. They get dirty and stained and junked up. you'll be better off in the long run getting rid of all the crap that you don't need and will end up storing in there.

I see your point but some people use it as more as a place to hang out than just a garage so therefore a garage is not always just a garage.

[shawndoggy]

Is your garage floor made of glass that it needs to be so carefully protected? It's a GARAGE. They get dirty and stained and junked up. you'll be better off in the long run getting rid of all the crap that you don't need and will end up storing in there.

I mean I think you could make the same argument about washing your car, brushing your teeth or doing laundry.  Not sure why taking care of your stuff is a bad thing.  Plus from a "lipstick on the pig" perspective, doing a couple hundred bucks worth of DIY garage floor coating is a great way to make your home stand out if you ever go to sell.

[BeardedMustache]

I suppose it depends on how you view your garage and what you do there.

If you go the epoxy route, I'd recommend letting a professional do it. It really isnt that much more than the cost of the materials + machine rental. I had mine done over a year ago and I love it.

[bandito]

Is your garage floor made of glass that it needs to be so carefully protected? It's a GARAGE. They get dirty and stained and junked up. you'll be better off in the long run getting rid of all the crap that you don't need and will end up storing in there.

I mean I think you could make the same argument about washing your car, brushing your teeth or doing laundry.  Not sure why taking care of your stuff is a bad thing.  Plus from a "lipstick on the pig" perspective, doing a couple hundred bucks worth of DIY garage floor coating is a great way to make your home stand out if you ever go to sell.


Agreed 100%

[bandito]

I suppose it depends on how you view your garage and what you do there.

If you go the epoxy route, I'd recommend letting a professional do it. It really isnt that much more than the cost of the materials + machine rental. I had mine done over a year ago and I love it.

Thank you for the positive reply.