flukester
Member
Hi everyone!
After lurking on the board and learning a lot in the process, I decided it was time for a thread about my own project.
First, let me tell you that I am not the owner of the place. Therefore, I am somewhat limiting the budget that goes into the garage.
The garage is about 9.75' x 37' and it comes with a 6 rooms appartment over two stories, much to the delight of my girlfriend...
I plan to use the first half for whichever car I'm working on and use the deepest half for the tools and counters.
So far, we have cleaned the garage, removed the old counters that the previous tenants had left, cleaned the garage floor with various products (alkaline and acid products) to remove as much contaminants as possible.
Not all contaminants would come out. There were many cracks all around, mostly caused by freezing and thawing of the ground underneath, over the years. Where possible, edges of the cracks have been smoothed out using some "sanding stone" that is typically used to make bricks filling smooth.
We must have washed the floor at least 5 times, letting dry for 48 hours every time. A few times, the wash/rinse was done with a pressure washer machine.
The whole floor was also cleaned with a shopvac between each wash and one last time, right before the actual painting was performed.
We had the landlord replace some of the gyproc sheets that had sustained heavy damage from previous tenants (they had absorbed so much water they were starting to disintegrate). This made us clean the floor two extra times (which is why we actually cleaned 5 times total), to remove all the excess plaster that was dumped on the floor when the old gyproc was removed...
Then, we filled in the cracks with Rust-oleum repair epoxy and finally painted the floor with Rust-oleum epoxy paint.
All in all, it took easily 40 or 50 hours, over the last month. Good thing I had two good assistants: Kimmy and Simon. Sincere thanks to both of them!
There is a lot left to do, including getting proper lighting installed, new counters and a sink installed. I'll try to update this thread as new steps are completed.
A gallery with more pictures can be found at http://www.flukester.net/gallery/garage.
This is how it looked before we started:
Here are a few pics taken during the process:
Here is how it looks after ~72hours drying.
The pictures don't do the floor justice. For some reason, my camera picks up some reflection where the cracks were filled, which you almost don't see when actually standing in the room. I'll try to take better pictures during the day, to avoid using the flash and see if I get any better results.
As said earlier, a more complete gallery of pictures can be found at http://www.flukester.net/gallery/garage.
Comments appreciated! Keep in mind that I am not a professional and this is my first garage project...
Thanks for reading!
Antoine in montreal.qc.ca
After lurking on the board and learning a lot in the process, I decided it was time for a thread about my own project.
First, let me tell you that I am not the owner of the place. Therefore, I am somewhat limiting the budget that goes into the garage.
The garage is about 9.75' x 37' and it comes with a 6 rooms appartment over two stories, much to the delight of my girlfriend...
I plan to use the first half for whichever car I'm working on and use the deepest half for the tools and counters.
So far, we have cleaned the garage, removed the old counters that the previous tenants had left, cleaned the garage floor with various products (alkaline and acid products) to remove as much contaminants as possible.
Not all contaminants would come out. There were many cracks all around, mostly caused by freezing and thawing of the ground underneath, over the years. Where possible, edges of the cracks have been smoothed out using some "sanding stone" that is typically used to make bricks filling smooth.
We must have washed the floor at least 5 times, letting dry for 48 hours every time. A few times, the wash/rinse was done with a pressure washer machine.
The whole floor was also cleaned with a shopvac between each wash and one last time, right before the actual painting was performed.
We had the landlord replace some of the gyproc sheets that had sustained heavy damage from previous tenants (they had absorbed so much water they were starting to disintegrate). This made us clean the floor two extra times (which is why we actually cleaned 5 times total), to remove all the excess plaster that was dumped on the floor when the old gyproc was removed...
Then, we filled in the cracks with Rust-oleum repair epoxy and finally painted the floor with Rust-oleum epoxy paint.
All in all, it took easily 40 or 50 hours, over the last month. Good thing I had two good assistants: Kimmy and Simon. Sincere thanks to both of them!
There is a lot left to do, including getting proper lighting installed, new counters and a sink installed. I'll try to update this thread as new steps are completed.
A gallery with more pictures can be found at http://www.flukester.net/gallery/garage.
This is how it looked before we started:
Here are a few pics taken during the process:
Here is how it looks after ~72hours drying.
The pictures don't do the floor justice. For some reason, my camera picks up some reflection where the cracks were filled, which you almost don't see when actually standing in the room. I'll try to take better pictures during the day, to avoid using the flash and see if I get any better results.
As said earlier, a more complete gallery of pictures can be found at http://www.flukester.net/gallery/garage.
Comments appreciated! Keep in mind that I am not a professional and this is my first garage project...
Thanks for reading!
Antoine in montreal.qc.ca
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