arthurk192
Member
Hey GJ World,
I thought I'd do a brief post of my experience with DYI garage flooring using Garage Flooring LLC's polyurea product.
Plan: Tuesday & Wednesday - clean/degrease, Thursday - acid etch, Friday - fill cracks & joints, Saturday - 1 layer base color & 1 layer clear w/glitter, Sunday - final layer with anti-skid
Education: Countless youtube videos, how to articles and GJ posts. Overall these were really helpful but overwhelming at times because of how much i was trying to remember not to screw up. In the end, I went back and re-referenced many of these videos after each step of the process as a refresher.
Prep: Powerwash, degrease, powerwash. (over several evenings) Tip: Get a turbo nozzle on amazon, this helped move the process along much faster than when I didn't have one. I chose to acid etch vs grind because I thought it would be faster, easier and cheaper. I can now see why people grind. First time around i got confused and had too much water on the garage when i put down the acid so nothing happened. 2nd time was better but I wasn't sure if it was good enough so 3rd time I increased the acid ratio to ensure the concrete was being etched (probably overkill tbh). Even after washing and squeegeeing the floor the next morning there was a super fine dust on the entire floor. This presented me with a problem as it was Friday and really didn't want to get the floor wet but couldn't get rid of the dust. I ended up buying baking soda just in case it acid was still present and power washing the entire garage again. Thankfully it was a hot day and the cement was drying quickly.
Joint/Cracks: I waited as long as I could for the concrete to dry and began filling in the joints & cracks. (Justin from GF was amazing throughout this whole experience, super responsive to calls and texts and helpful giving great advice though I didn't always listen and then regretted it) I had purchased the "No Grind Flex Joint Fill 2 Gallon Kit" which was WAYYY too much product for what i needed. But I thought what the hell if its good enough for joints why not use it to fill cracks in the corners of my garage. Justin said this would work but probably not the best product. Turns out trying to razor this stuff against a wall REALLY ***** and it took forever. It overall worked great for the joints. Biggest problem i had at the joints was not always being able to scrape the floor evenly. A larger razer would have helped or something a bit stiffer so it didn't bend into the joints. Now i have filled but uneven joints. Lesson learned but oh well its just a garage is what i kept having to tell myself.
Layer 1: My wife wanted a darker grey then the normal color and against Justin's advice we decided to mix grey and black together. He was clear this can be done but isn't advised as it's very difficult to get color consistency. We thought ok we will just mix it really really well and should be good to go. Wrong! even though it seems mixed in we ended up with some parts darker than others. Again nothing wrong with the product but we didn't follow instructions (you'll see a theme here). Other than color the overall process was super easy and the product went down easy without issues. We did get quite a bit of bubbling which i'm thinking is due to us mixing the 2 colors and running a drill mixer for a while. I wasn't really sure what (don't add air in is so I'm guessing again this was user error)
Layer 2: After several hours of drying the floor was ready for the second coat. My wife saw these glitter floors on pinterest and other sites and wanted to do the same. We had seen most people mixing in the glitter with their flooring product and rolling it on so we thought that was the easiest approach. Justin hadn't done glitter before but did recommend throwing the glitter on instead of mixing it. But of course, we didn't listen (BAD DECISION). The issue became the glitter would first be really really heavy and quickly become light and so it was super inconsistent. In the end, we had to keep dunking the roller just to get more glitter on to keep the amount of glitter on the floor consistent which meant we used WAY more product than anticipated. (2 gallons did the whole floor on Layer 1 with some leftover and did a little over 50% of the garage in Layer 2) This meant we were out of glitter and this stuff can't be sourced locally since you're not supposed to use craft glitter. This meant we had to stop and order more material
Justin was again super helpful and even gave us a discount for ordering more polyurea. I ordered 3 more gallons of polyurea and 3 more pounds of glitter just to make sure we didn't run out!
Layer 2.5: Due to scheduling I couldn't get back to the floor until 2 weeks later. Justin advised sanding the floor, wiping down with denatured alcohol and then we'd be good to go for Layer 3. Not knowing how much to actually sand I did my best and said eh its good enough and moved forward with the process. This time we wanted to be sure we didn't run out and were able to fill in some of the inconsistent areas so with 3 gallons of material I went over the entire garage again ensuring that the broadcast was as consistent as I could get it without also putting down so much polyurea that it would bubble agian. This went pretty smoothly and we did have half a gallon left over. Overall this was a super dumb way to do things and we should have just thrown the glitter on like Justin had suggested. We would have used way less product and avoided some of the bubbling.
Layer 3: This was a piece of cake compared to the glitter. Used 1lb anti-skid w/ 2 gallons of polyurea and rolled it all on. The hardest part here is making sure you don't miss a spot. Fingers crossed we didn't. My dad was able to come up and help roll while I followed him backrolling.
Overall this took WAY more time and cost way more than I had expected. Not sure I'd do it again but a lot of the pain could have been avoided if we had just not done glitter and stuck to 1 color. I guess 2nd time around I'll know what to do but know knowing that I may prefer to pay someone. We do love the look of the floor and have pride in knowing we did it ourselves. Garage Flooring was great to work with, quick to respond to any questions and I couldn't have done it without Justin's guidance. (THANK YOU)
Hope you enjoy the pictures and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have.
Google Photos Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kg6xKRk8NpTr57Ma7
I thought I'd do a brief post of my experience with DYI garage flooring using Garage Flooring LLC's polyurea product.
Plan: Tuesday & Wednesday - clean/degrease, Thursday - acid etch, Friday - fill cracks & joints, Saturday - 1 layer base color & 1 layer clear w/glitter, Sunday - final layer with anti-skid
Education: Countless youtube videos, how to articles and GJ posts. Overall these were really helpful but overwhelming at times because of how much i was trying to remember not to screw up. In the end, I went back and re-referenced many of these videos after each step of the process as a refresher.
Prep: Powerwash, degrease, powerwash. (over several evenings) Tip: Get a turbo nozzle on amazon, this helped move the process along much faster than when I didn't have one. I chose to acid etch vs grind because I thought it would be faster, easier and cheaper. I can now see why people grind. First time around i got confused and had too much water on the garage when i put down the acid so nothing happened. 2nd time was better but I wasn't sure if it was good enough so 3rd time I increased the acid ratio to ensure the concrete was being etched (probably overkill tbh). Even after washing and squeegeeing the floor the next morning there was a super fine dust on the entire floor. This presented me with a problem as it was Friday and really didn't want to get the floor wet but couldn't get rid of the dust. I ended up buying baking soda just in case it acid was still present and power washing the entire garage again. Thankfully it was a hot day and the cement was drying quickly.
Joint/Cracks: I waited as long as I could for the concrete to dry and began filling in the joints & cracks. (Justin from GF was amazing throughout this whole experience, super responsive to calls and texts and helpful giving great advice though I didn't always listen and then regretted it) I had purchased the "No Grind Flex Joint Fill 2 Gallon Kit" which was WAYYY too much product for what i needed. But I thought what the hell if its good enough for joints why not use it to fill cracks in the corners of my garage. Justin said this would work but probably not the best product. Turns out trying to razor this stuff against a wall REALLY ***** and it took forever. It overall worked great for the joints. Biggest problem i had at the joints was not always being able to scrape the floor evenly. A larger razer would have helped or something a bit stiffer so it didn't bend into the joints. Now i have filled but uneven joints. Lesson learned but oh well its just a garage is what i kept having to tell myself.
Layer 1: My wife wanted a darker grey then the normal color and against Justin's advice we decided to mix grey and black together. He was clear this can be done but isn't advised as it's very difficult to get color consistency. We thought ok we will just mix it really really well and should be good to go. Wrong! even though it seems mixed in we ended up with some parts darker than others. Again nothing wrong with the product but we didn't follow instructions (you'll see a theme here). Other than color the overall process was super easy and the product went down easy without issues. We did get quite a bit of bubbling which i'm thinking is due to us mixing the 2 colors and running a drill mixer for a while. I wasn't really sure what (don't add air in is so I'm guessing again this was user error)
Layer 2: After several hours of drying the floor was ready for the second coat. My wife saw these glitter floors on pinterest and other sites and wanted to do the same. We had seen most people mixing in the glitter with their flooring product and rolling it on so we thought that was the easiest approach. Justin hadn't done glitter before but did recommend throwing the glitter on instead of mixing it. But of course, we didn't listen (BAD DECISION). The issue became the glitter would first be really really heavy and quickly become light and so it was super inconsistent. In the end, we had to keep dunking the roller just to get more glitter on to keep the amount of glitter on the floor consistent which meant we used WAY more product than anticipated. (2 gallons did the whole floor on Layer 1 with some leftover and did a little over 50% of the garage in Layer 2) This meant we were out of glitter and this stuff can't be sourced locally since you're not supposed to use craft glitter. This meant we had to stop and order more material
Justin was again super helpful and even gave us a discount for ordering more polyurea. I ordered 3 more gallons of polyurea and 3 more pounds of glitter just to make sure we didn't run out!Layer 2.5: Due to scheduling I couldn't get back to the floor until 2 weeks later. Justin advised sanding the floor, wiping down with denatured alcohol and then we'd be good to go for Layer 3. Not knowing how much to actually sand I did my best and said eh its good enough and moved forward with the process. This time we wanted to be sure we didn't run out and were able to fill in some of the inconsistent areas so with 3 gallons of material I went over the entire garage again ensuring that the broadcast was as consistent as I could get it without also putting down so much polyurea that it would bubble agian. This went pretty smoothly and we did have half a gallon left over. Overall this was a super dumb way to do things and we should have just thrown the glitter on like Justin had suggested. We would have used way less product and avoided some of the bubbling.
Layer 3: This was a piece of cake compared to the glitter. Used 1lb anti-skid w/ 2 gallons of polyurea and rolled it all on. The hardest part here is making sure you don't miss a spot. Fingers crossed we didn't. My dad was able to come up and help roll while I followed him backrolling.
Overall this took WAY more time and cost way more than I had expected. Not sure I'd do it again but a lot of the pain could have been avoided if we had just not done glitter and stuck to 1 color. I guess 2nd time around I'll know what to do but know knowing that I may prefer to pay someone. We do love the look of the floor and have pride in knowing we did it ourselves. Garage Flooring was great to work with, quick to respond to any questions and I couldn't have done it without Justin's guidance. (THANK YOU)
Hope you enjoy the pictures and I'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have.
Google Photos Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Kg6xKRk8NpTr57Ma7
