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Imagine seeing the reflection of your own car in your garage floor. This is what it would be like if you had an epoxy garage floor. If you’d like to drive onto your own personal showroom floor, whether you own a ’82 econobox or a brand new Beamer, a shiny epoxy garage floor could be the answer you’re looking for. Many professionals consider an epoxy garage floor coating to be the creme de la creme, and for good reason. Lasting often as long as the concrete itself, epoxy garage floors will be around for years, if not decades. There is a trade-off, though. Isn’t there always? Epoxy does take a lot of time to put down, and it’s far from the simplest garage floor solution. The good news is that, although it may have to be refreshed every once in a while, the initial install is most of the work. Epoxy cannot crumple under car tires or move about when sprayed off, which is a big pro over a lot of other garage floor coverings.

Durable Epoxy Garage Flooring

Extremely tough, epoxy is a very long-lasting coating that is painted onto concrete. Different than normal paint, epoxy will resist grease, oils, and many other things that ruin or plain out dissolve ordinary paints. Regular paint wouldn’t be able to handle things like motor oils since they’re mostly oil based themselves, which means you need a special type of paint, such as epoxy. This is because when two oil based substances mix, they naturally attempt to combine with each other. This effect causes motor oil and paint to basically be mutually self destructive. Parts cleaner, grease, fuel, power steering fluid, brake fluid…all are petroleum based, and all have the same effect on petroleum based paints. It’s actually pretty interesting if you start thinking of just how petroleum based most of our lives’ are. That’s what’s great about epoxy based paints, though. Since they’re resin based, they’re not susceptible to damage from oil and oil based substances.

Shiny Old Epoxy Garage Floors

Of all the different types of garage flooring, the epoxy garage floor is unique in that it bonds with the concrete at a microscopic level. This means that once the epoxy coating is years, sometimes decades old, it can still be cleaned just like the concrete by itself. The difference is that it doesn’t stain since it doesn’t absorb the oil based chemicals that are so often found in garages. Since it doesn’t stain, it’s usually just a matter of power washing the garage floor, if that. Most chemicals will just sit on top of an epoxy coating and can be cleaned up with either a towel, or possibly pushed out of the garage with a squeegee or broom. Be careful, though, that you don’t contaminate the earth around your garage with chemicals that, before, you would’ve absorbed with kitty litter or the like and thrown in the trash. Just because it doesn’t damage your garage floor doesn’t mean it won’t damage the environment, and everything that hits your soil will eventually end up in the groundwater – that’s drinking water.

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?

Maybe. Well, probably. Epoxy does require a lot of preparing, as opposed to just about any other type of garage floor. Some concrete, though, simply can’t take a good epoxy coating. Even should your concrete be determined to be in good enough condition to accept a coating, it will have to be cleaned and etched, which is extremely tedious and labor intensive. There’s really no method of applying an epoxy garage floor that is for the faint of heart, or faint of back, for that matter. If you’re like me, and aren’t exactly in the best of shape, you may want to consider something a bit less intensive. Garage floor tiles, for instance, can be started and finished pretty much whenever you like, without regard to time limits and setting times. Small garage floor mats can be moved about when you need to, so sometimes they’re all you need. However, if your body or bank account are up to the task, an epoxy garage floor coating just might be for you.

Eppie likes to write articles about her garage floor and garage floor paint.