How does this epoxy garage floor job look?

[danf54321]

I hired a company to epoxy coat my 500sqft garage floor. They charged $2,500 to grind, prime, epoxy, and topcoat with polyaspartic.

I'm worried I'm being too much of a perfectionist, but I'm not very satisfied with their work. They used handheld grinders to grind the entire floor, and gouged them into the floor in several places, leaving "half moon" marks that are visible in the finished floor. They also didn't completely fill the pores in the concrete (I'd estimate there are 50 holes that are visibly not coated through). I live in a cold climate, and am worried water getting in there will freeze and thaw, causing spalling. They broadcast an aluminum oxide grit over it, but it's visibly non-uniform density, causing it to have a weird variable sheen.

I know the products are quite expensive, so is this a situation of "Yeah, you got what you paid for if this only cost you $2,500" (which I'd be fine with), or "Nah, this is an amateur hack job"? Any help "calibrating" my "quality meter" would be much appreciated! Thank you!

 

[danf54321]

One more picture - this is after the epoxy first coat (not after the top coat), but it shows the grinder marks well (and while they're obvious in-person, they're hard to photograph)

 

[kngelv]

Sorry you definitely got a poor install.

James

 

[FJ4FUN]

Well, to begin with, hand grinding 500sf is an immediate "red flag" but so is $5.00psf all-in. You definitely didn't get a good install but you didn't really pay for one either....

 

[danf54321]

Yep, and that was intentional - I can't justify spending $10-15/sqft on this particular house, so I *was* looking for a cheap job.

And I get it - the body shop that repairs stolen Kias isn't doing Ferraris, too - there are different price points in any market. But not being familiar with the market, I'm trying to understand if this is "standard quality" that you'd expect for $5/sqft.

 

[rjacobs]

single light color with no flake you are going to see EVERYTHING....

My guess is your installer, like almost all the stories on here, will tell you to pound it where the sun dont shine...

Once you start using the garage, parking on it, etc... you wont notice a lot of the little issues.

 

[danf54321]

single light color with no flake you are going to see EVERYTHING....

Sure, I get that. But if they had used a proper grinder (instead of handheld ones), wouldn't the "stuff to see" be much less?

I haven't paid for the job, yet, so part of this post is to see if others feel the work meets expectations and I should pay for it, or if the quality is poor enough to justify withholding some portion of the payment.

 

[rjacobs]

Sure, I get that. But if they had used a proper grinder (instead of handheld ones), wouldn't the "stuff to see" be much less?

I can GUARANTEE your concrete wasnt "smooth" before this job was done, you just probably didnt notice it. Not saying they should have gouged your concrete, but I bet it wasnt as nice as you think it was as concrete never is.

I did my own floor on our new house in 2020. I thought "damn this floor is smooth, spotless, etc...". Then I got to grinding with a big walk behind grinder and the floor was filled with a ton of peaks and valleys and other imperfections that once you break the "glaze" on the surface you then see EVERYTHING. Nothing I could do about it. Once we got the full floor down with flake all those imperfections once again disappeared. Flake covers a lot of sins IMO. Some people dont like it because its hard to find small nuts and bolts that are dropped because they blend into the flake...yea thats true, but it also hides a lot of the concrete imperfections.

 

[danf54321]

I can GUARANTEE your concrete wasnt "smooth" before this job was done, you just probably didnt notice it.

Oh, I KNOW it wasn't! The quote contained a separately line-item for concrete repair, though, and to be clear, I have no problem with imperfections that were already present - I'm upset by the grinder gouges that they *added*.

I do some woodworking and it's well known that you never "tip" a sander because it'll gouge the work and leave it non-flat. It seems like the exact same with a concrete grinder, no?

 

[kngelv]

Yep, and that was intentional - I can't justify spending $10-15/sqft on this particular house, so I *was* looking for a cheap job.

And I get it - the body shop that repairs stolen Kias isn't doing Ferraris, too - there are different price points in any market. But not being familiar with the market, I'm trying to understand if this is "standard quality" that you'd expect for $5/sqft.

You looked for a cheap job and got one. Nothing to complain about. You could have just left the concrete as it was.

James

 

[dcg9381]

You could have just left the concrete as it was.

Nah. No more oil spots or worries about spills. Perfect? Nope. But neither is any floor job that I've done.

single light color with no flake you are going to see EVERYTHING....

That's true. But on the upside, if you drop something, you're going go find it... I've done quite 2 "white" garage floors.