Legacy Industrial primer/epoxy done!

[jwvess00]

Hi there!

I thought about titling this post "Bad floor, good coating" but didn't want go give the wrong impression.

tl; dr -- Dad and I just finished using Legacy Industrial's epoxy primer and light gray SD epoxy coating on my 36x50 pole barn. My initial impression is that it looks really good and it applied well. Legacy makes a fantastic product, and I highly recommend it. I will be using it again on my attached garage if/when I get around to that.

Legacy has some fantastic customer support. I used their gel crack filler, had some questions, and they were very helpful.

The previous owner of my house built the shop in 2004 and as far as I can tell he poured it himself. Nothing about this floor is flat. I think they poured it, raked and floated it, and that's it. It's wavy and water pools in various places. There's nothing I'm going to do about that.

The previous owner also erected a couple of walls inside, driving fasteners into the floor. Those walls had to go, so I had holes to fix. I also had some cracks to fix. He wrenched on old Jeeps in there, and there was a lot of oil and grease stains.

After pressure washing, soaping, washing, (and washing...) and diamond grinding (and patching cracks and holes, and more soap, and pressure washing...) we were ready to coat.

Here's where we started:

A few years ago Dad and I coated his then-new shop with a different 100% solids product so we had a bit of experience and an idea of what to expect.

The Legacy primer kits came packaged in two halves -- two part A, and two part B. Each half covered 300 sq. ft. The shop floor is sawed in half along the 50' side, so I marked the wall every 8'4" (150 square feet to the center saw mark). We used that as a reference for knowing how far to spread the material.

The first section of primer we applied with just an 18" roller frame and a 1/4" nap roller, It was splotchy looking but okay. After that we started using an 18" squeegee to move the material around before rolling out, and that made things go MUCH better. It looked much more even from then on out. I highly recommend spreading the material with a squeegee before rolling it out. It made rolling it out evenly much easier.

Here's half the floor primered:

That was yesterday. This morning we inspected our work and were pleased with the primer. It didn't completely hide the repaired cracks and filled spots but it came pretty close. I used a razor blade to carefully skim off the bugs that tested the coating for dryness and we applied the finish coating.

This concrete floor just is never going to be beautifully flat, smooth, and level unless I tear it out and re-pour it but that's not the point of this workshop. I'm going to wrench on stuff in one part, and do woodworking in the other, and I want the floor to do its job and be easy to maintain, so the epoxy went down. No chips for this one -- maybe in the attached garage when I get around to do ing it.

Some bugs will get in as it dries, and probably a blade of grass or two (the drive leading to it is grass and gravel), but overall I'm thrilled. I'm going to give it a week, then start working on more interior work -- ceiling, partition wall, wiring lights, and so on.

So, here's the finished but still wet product.

 

[930dreamer]

Looking good.

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

Showroom!!
Resend me your address and shirt sizes for you and dad!

 

[benwah]

Wow, that looks really great!

 

[retfr8flyr]

Looking really good!!

 

[rburke65]

Looks like ya did a nice job as well as a nice write up. Thanks for taking the time to do so!

 

[tncatadjuster]

Excellent work, looks great.

 

[jwvess00]

Hi there!

It may seem picky that I marked the walls to show where each 150 sq. ft. section is, but that was very useful. It would not be difficult to over-spread the epoxy, and end up with a thinner coat than is recommended. The primer, covering 300 sq. ft. per half-kit wasn't too hard to "get right" but the finish coat puts down about twice that much material in the same area, and it would have been easy to spread it too thin. The marks made it easy to know how much of an area to fill with one mix.

One thing Dad was worried about was blending the sections between pours. He was worried that there would be a visible line where one pour stopped and the other started. That was not the case for this product. The working time was at least 30 minutes for our weather conditions, and we were doing pours much faster than that. It was simple to roll one pour into the previous pour's "wet edge" as it were, and there are no lap marks.

This stuff flowed out nicely, too. After spreading it with the squeegee and rolling it out, it flowed out smoothly -- no roller texture. I'm sure you could over-roll it and cause a texture problem, but it wasn't necessary. After the squeegee, we rolled it just until it was spread evenly, and quit. There was no reason to keep rolling it after that.

I took a look at it this morning -- about 20ish hours after application. It's still shiny The floor was cured enough that it was not at all tacky. To the touch it felt solid but I didn't put any weight on it (though I did the thumbnail test, and it was definitely hard, no way a thumbnail would print it.. I'm going to let it sit until at least Monday (7 days after application) before doing anything in the shop. I don't have an immediate need to be in there, so I'm going it let it sit for a while.

The color is "light gray" for those that are wondering what that looks like applied.

 

[BabaGanoosh]

Thanks for the write-up. I am doing a legacy garage this month and appreciate the tips. I will need lots of HD 821. Here are a couple newbie questions if you don't mind. 1) Did you use a rubber squeegee and did you have to replace it every 30 minutes as the epoxy dried on it? I was going to just use a roller but you make a strong case for a squeegee. 2) Did you use spiked shoes? Great job! Looks great!

 

[LegacyIndustrial]

Baba, if you decide to use a squeegee you can clean it with xylol as you go.
That goes for anything that you get the material on, including your sneakers.

 

[jwvess00]

Hi there!

I didn't have any trouble keeping the squeegee clean. It cleaned up nicely with lacquer thinner.

I did not use spiked shoes, though my shop was laid out such that I didn't have to tread back into the coated area -- and I didn't use any flakes. If I were broadcasting flakes, I'm guessing spiked shoes would be much, much more important.

I used the 821 gel crack filler. It works pretty well, but there are some things to remember.

It comes in gallon cans, which for me was a bit tricky to dispense. It's pretty thick. You're not pouring it. I used tablespoons to put a few tablespoons at a time on a large piece of cardboard, mixed well, then spooned out into the cracks.

I had trouble keeping the mix ratio just right by eye. I recommend you use a method to mix the parts accurately. A small kitchen scale would probably be best. I had a couple of places I had to re-do because I didn't mix in enough catalyst.

Try to get it tooled as smooth as you can. It's a stiff gel when cured, which is good but it's not rock-hard like JB Weld, and won't machine like it. It will not sand well, clogging up sandpaper pretty quickly. These are good properties for a gel crack filler, but it does make post-cure finishing trickier. I used a razor blade to do some final smoothing after it cured. Life will be much easier if you tool it smooth and remove excess beforehand, rather than piling it on with intentions of removing the excess later.

I was mixing about 2-3 tablespoons of part A and part B at once, and had about 10 minutes of working time before it started to cure.

 

[EpoxyCoat2]

Looks like a brand new room!! Great Job!

 

[SpecOp1]

Great write up and job...

 

[mwehnes]

Baba, if you decide to use a squeegee you can clean it with xylol as you go.
That goes for anything that you get the material on, including your sneakers.

What about the rollers? Do you have to change out the roller covers every ~30 min or clean them? I have 820sqft to do and I'm not sure how many rollers I'm going to need to complete it (primer, epoxy, clear).

 

[Jim B]

I did 750 sq.ft. with one roller. I rolled it as dry as I could between sections while my helper mixed the next batch and it lasted through the whole job. I did have a spare on hand just in case but didn't need it. We applied the epoxy in the evening with temps in the 70's and humidity about 50%.

 

[jwvess00]

Hi there!

I did the job with two rollers. One for prime, one for topcoat. Each did all 1800 sq. ft. and I didn't have to clean them every 30 minutes. Note too that once we started the job, we didn't stop until we were done -- no breaks, nothing. We'd mix a batch, put it on the floor, then mix the next batch immediately after that. I would be rolling out the current batch while Dad was mixing the next.

I used Wooster EpoxyGlide roller covers #R232.

 

[rigore]

"After pressure washing, soaping, washing, (and washing...) and diamond grinding (and patching cracks and holes, and more soap, and pressure washing...) we were ready to coat."

Is the order you followed. Getting ready to order the supplies and do mine.

I rented a POD to clear the garage, I should have started reading up on epoxying a floor properly a month ago! Needless to say there are so many ways to do the floors and so many different practices. So far I have:

1. Scraped any paint drippings
2. Swept and shop vac'ed several times
3. Used Oil Eater to degrease the floors.
4. Pressure wash?
5. Grind floors?
6. Pressure wash or just hose off and scrub with brush?

I am working on wall patching, painting shelves and painting the stem walls as I figure out when I should grind in relation to painting the floor. Can I do this a week or so prior to painting the floor? Just trying to get the most use of the POD without paying for another month.

 

[retfr8flyr]

When I did mine I had to pressure wash 2 times after grinding the floor, before it felt clean. After you grind the floor you need to clean it until you can wipe your hand over the dry floor and nothing comes up.

 

[mwehnes]

IMO you need to pressure wash after grinding to ensure the floor is really clean. Just scrubbing and using a garden hose is not going to clean out the pores as good as a PW. Especially if you let any of that dust get wet and then dry on the concrete.

 

[rigore]

How about pressure washing prior to grinding?

 

[jwvess00]

Hi there!

I washed my floors like if I kept doing it I'd win something (with apologies to Dave Attel for stealing his line)

Aside -- PODS are fantastic. I used one when I moved from my old house to this one. I highly recommend them. Just watching their truck unload and load one is worth it:

Here's the thing -- wash the floor before you get started to start with a clean space. Diamond grind the floor (or acid etch, or whatever you choose to do). Wash again. Fix the imperfections. Wash again. Then coat. "Wash" may mean pressure-wash, or garden hose, and can include detergent and scrubbing, rinsing, and vacuuming. Choose what and how much you do based on the condition of the floor at the time. Err on the side of too much effort for the conditions.

Once I had the shop emptied out, I pressure-washed the floor to get as much out as I could. I then scrubbed it with detergent and pressure-washed again. I then wet the floor a section at a time (it was hot outside so the floor was drying pretty fast), and used my Shop Vac to wet-vacuum up the whole floor.

Then I rented the diamond grinder from Home Depot, and used the wet method to grind the floor. This will not remove much of the concrete. It won't remove any old paint stains (mostly), it won't remove embedded oil, etc. Do not expect it to do anything related to cleaning. It will profile the concrete to the texture of denim (the best description I can come up with).

That formed a slurry of concrete dust that dried on the floor, so I pressure-washed again to remove it. I filled all of the imperfections, then did any finishing I had to do on the filler. After all that, I washed and vacuumed the floor one more time.

 

[rigore]

Jwvess00, thank you for the step by step regarding cleaning. I will pressure wash and see what I am left with. I have roughly three weeks to order product, pressure wash, grind and then pressure wash again. I am also trying to paint the walls and hanging wall cabinets within that time frame.