Hi. My name's Roylnn and I'd like to thank everyone who has contributed to this forum. Your posts helped me immensely to avoid most, but not all, of the common mistakes.
First a little about me and my garage. I'm a woman so the concept of Dream Garage was foreign to me. Women don't dream about garages. Ever. I use my garage for only a couple things: working on my **** Italian road bike, making furniture and occasionally parking a vehicle in it. The only fluids that will ever mar on its surface are chain lube and maybe a little Chardonnay. However, it had major surface damage and a previous owner's fix was failing badly. I was at a loss until I found this forum... and down the rabbit hole I went.
All that stuff at the front is spalled concrete. It was mostly very shallow although some places it got to be as much as quarter inch deep. I power washed all the loose stuff out and got on it with the angle grinder.
I ordered some Legacy patch product which was great but I didn't get enough so I ended up doing the rest with Rustoleum epoxy patch from the Po. They both worked pretty well but it was just so easy to get it locally that I kept going with that until I got all the patches fixed.
At this point I began thinking of it as my Franken-floor. Fully a quarter of the floor area was patched. I kept hoping that when I eventually ground it with the Diamabrush that it would level it out. After all, what's a little epoxy up against the strength of diamond? (This is the first mistake: don't expect downstream processes to fix your current issue.)
So then it was time to clean and boy did I have some cleaning to do!
I had oil stains from the 70s that had to be coaxed out. I tried Zepp, Tide, Dawn, Pour 'n Restore and elbow grease. What I eventually found that worked was to hit it with Dawn and boiling water, let it set a bit to lift the gunk out, then grind it with a polishing pad. A little more about myself: as a DIYer I may be light on certain skills but I more than make up for it in tenacity. It's not always a good thing, though.
After the cleaning, I rented the Diamabrush and got one of the hand tools and went to town on it. My experience was about the same as others here with the exception that when going over the epoxy patches it was hard to control. And it did not, as I hoped, grind them smooth. Epoxy:1 Diamonds:0
It was about this point that I emailed Justin for assistance. He looked at my pictures (probably gasped!) and gave me the prescription for my Frankenfloor: primer, 97% solids coat, 100% solids coat and urethane top coat. I knew that it wasn't ever going to be glass smooth with all that damage, and I was okay with that. I just never wanted to hear the sickening crunch of snow tires on crumbling concrete again!
So down went the oil blocking primer. Some parts soaked it up like crazy but it just set on top of the epoxy patches. I was worried it wouldn't stick to them but I had roughed them up and cleaned with alcohol prior to coating.
It was kind of a shocking color and wildly uneven but it filled in some of the dips.
Then on to the first color coat.
Hardly looks like the same floor, huh? I had some good help on both coats so I won't bother taking all the credit.
For the second color coat (the Money Coat) my buddy, Lance, came over and helped me with the application. He's the kind of guy who dreams about garages. In 50 minutes we had applied all three gallons and were drinking margaritas downtown (yes, at 10:30 in the morning).
And finally, the urethane top coat. That was all me and I was wishing I had help because that stuff is hard to see. I read that time and again on this forum but you don't realize it until you're doing it.
If I hadn't found this forum, which made me believe normal folk could do this, I probably would have paid some concrete guy $$$ to fix my floor. Thanks to Justin at Garage Flooring LLC for all his patient answers to my newbie questions and to all of you who swallowed your pride and posted up your mistakes. I learned more from that than anything else.
Oh yeah, my mistakes were: cat walked across one color coat, uneven top coat and I shut my garage door on the primer coat, effectively gluing it shut. Doh!
http://imgur.com/a/LTfoM
First a little about me and my garage. I'm a woman so the concept of Dream Garage was foreign to me. Women don't dream about garages. Ever. I use my garage for only a couple things: working on my **** Italian road bike, making furniture and occasionally parking a vehicle in it. The only fluids that will ever mar on its surface are chain lube and maybe a little Chardonnay. However, it had major surface damage and a previous owner's fix was failing badly. I was at a loss until I found this forum... and down the rabbit hole I went.
All that stuff at the front is spalled concrete. It was mostly very shallow although some places it got to be as much as quarter inch deep. I power washed all the loose stuff out and got on it with the angle grinder.
I ordered some Legacy patch product which was great but I didn't get enough so I ended up doing the rest with Rustoleum epoxy patch from the Po. They both worked pretty well but it was just so easy to get it locally that I kept going with that until I got all the patches fixed.
At this point I began thinking of it as my Franken-floor. Fully a quarter of the floor area was patched. I kept hoping that when I eventually ground it with the Diamabrush that it would level it out. After all, what's a little epoxy up against the strength of diamond? (This is the first mistake: don't expect downstream processes to fix your current issue.)
So then it was time to clean and boy did I have some cleaning to do!
I had oil stains from the 70s that had to be coaxed out. I tried Zepp, Tide, Dawn, Pour 'n Restore and elbow grease. What I eventually found that worked was to hit it with Dawn and boiling water, let it set a bit to lift the gunk out, then grind it with a polishing pad. A little more about myself: as a DIYer I may be light on certain skills but I more than make up for it in tenacity. It's not always a good thing, though.
After the cleaning, I rented the Diamabrush and got one of the hand tools and went to town on it. My experience was about the same as others here with the exception that when going over the epoxy patches it was hard to control. And it did not, as I hoped, grind them smooth. Epoxy:1 Diamonds:0
It was about this point that I emailed Justin for assistance. He looked at my pictures (probably gasped!) and gave me the prescription for my Frankenfloor: primer, 97% solids coat, 100% solids coat and urethane top coat. I knew that it wasn't ever going to be glass smooth with all that damage, and I was okay with that. I just never wanted to hear the sickening crunch of snow tires on crumbling concrete again!
So down went the oil blocking primer. Some parts soaked it up like crazy but it just set on top of the epoxy patches. I was worried it wouldn't stick to them but I had roughed them up and cleaned with alcohol prior to coating.
It was kind of a shocking color and wildly uneven but it filled in some of the dips.
Then on to the first color coat.
Hardly looks like the same floor, huh? I had some good help on both coats so I won't bother taking all the credit.
For the second color coat (the Money Coat) my buddy, Lance, came over and helped me with the application. He's the kind of guy who dreams about garages. In 50 minutes we had applied all three gallons and were drinking margaritas downtown (yes, at 10:30 in the morning).
And finally, the urethane top coat. That was all me and I was wishing I had help because that stuff is hard to see. I read that time and again on this forum but you don't realize it until you're doing it.
If I hadn't found this forum, which made me believe normal folk could do this, I probably would have paid some concrete guy $$$ to fix my floor. Thanks to Justin at Garage Flooring LLC for all his patient answers to my newbie questions and to all of you who swallowed your pride and posted up your mistakes. I learned more from that than anything else.
Oh yeah, my mistakes were: cat walked across one color coat, uneven top coat and I shut my garage door on the primer coat, effectively gluing it shut. Doh!
http://imgur.com/a/LTfoM
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