The pace is still slow, but there is still a pace… After getting the concrete work done in preparation for the Bendpak flush mount lift, I was finally in a place to deal with the floors. In the office space that is connected to this shop, you might remember that I used a Legacy Industrial product. That floor has been absolutely bullet proof and still looks as good as it did the day it went down, so I decided to go back to the boys at Legacy Industrial for the flooring in my shop.
This shop is not going to be a show room. It’s going to be a working shop that gets used, abused, and sometimes neglected. As such, I didn’t want to do anything too fancy or too fussy. The idea being that if I blew the budget on some gorgeous Epoxy system it would just be wasted as this space will likely be dirty much of the time. In reality, raw concrete would work just fine for me thank you – but I did want to guard against all of my flathead Fords marking their territory.
So I called Scotty at Legacy Industrial and told him I wanted an affordable concrete sealer that was durable and didn’t change the look of the raw concrete too much. He suggested their Standard Epoxy Sealer and my buddies from Mungle Bros. Concrete came out last week to lay it down for me.
Installation was pretty simple. Acid etch first… and then lay down two coats with 7 to 10 hours in-between.
Now, you might remember that I had all kinds of issues with my contractor and the concrete pad. The finished surface was less than respectable, but it wasn’t a point that I argued on too much. The reason is because I really want this space to feel lived in… to feel old… vintage… and a concrete floor that looks a little beat up is a big part of that.
I got there a number of ways. First, the contractor ran his scissor lift off the side of the pad while constructing the building. This left some divots in the pad that had to be patched later. Also, there were some rough spots in the pad that had to be smoothed out with some pretty aggressive sanding pads at high speed. Both these sanded areas and the damaged spots that were filled, gave the floor some texture that really pop once the semi-gloss sealer went down. On top of this, the sealer turned the concrete a nice shade of brown – accentuating the aged effect that I was going for.
You might say that this was an awful hard way to go about getting a floor that looks old and shitty… But, I think it will all be worth it in the end as while my floors might look lived on, they feel, sweep, and clean like a fancy Epoxy floor. Only time will tell how durable this sealer is (past experience with Legacy makes me really confident), but as it stands I couldn’t be happier.
Check it out:
Got any questions or want to follow the rest of the build? No sweat, check out the build thread here.
