• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!

    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

Garage floor

alphatopher

Member
Offline
This may not be the appropriate place for this post, but here goes. The wife has kicked me out of the garage, so I put french doors in the basement and converted it into a 26x18 workshop to work on the TR6. The floor is concrete, and I want to cover it with paint or epoxy. Any recommendations? I want something that will hold up to steel jack wheels rolling around on it, oil/hydro fluid leaking everywhere, and the like associated with a frame off restoration.
 
Hey, Alpha -

That's a great size for a work area. Mine's 24x12, and a bit cramped.

I'm going to move this over to the Pub - I think you'll get more exposure there.
 
Aircraft hanger paint. It's tough as nails. The only way I've managed to chip mine is to chip the concrete itself.

The key is in preparation. The concrete must be completely clean to apply paint of any kind.

DSCN2681.jpg
 
I am in the process of painting the floor of our new garage (nicknamed the Taj Garage, as it has become a bit of a monument!). I am using the Rustoleum industrial epoxy floor paint. As mentioned, its all in the preperation. Even though the floor is new, I spent last Sunday scrubbing and etching (with an acidic solution) and scrubbing again the floor in prepreperation to using the epoxy paint. The paint itself is a two-part mixture that is supposed to give a very hard finish. That goes on next weekend so I'll be able to tell you more then.

Rob.
 
Steve - Where did you get airplane hangar paint & what di it run you? Did you do it yourself or have a contractor do it?

Rob - Where did you get the rustoleum & how much does it run?
 
I hired someone to do it in order to get the 5-year warranty against chips, cracks, etc. I should have done it myself. I had a lot of problems with the installers and they had to come back three times before I was satisfied enough to send them away.

I seem to recall that it cost me around $700 including paint and labor. A large portion of that is the paint itself. It isn't cheap, but it's extremely durable. I left a pool of brake fluid on the floor for a week and it wiped right off with no ill effects.
 
vping said:
Rob - Where did you get the rustoleum & how much does it run?

Ordered it through my local lumber yard (they are an agent for Rustoleum). As I remember it was about $80 for 2 gallons - good for 500 square feet as I recall. You can also get a non-slip additive for it.

Rob.
 
I've got the Rust-Oleum EpoxyShield product on my floor (which is different than the Rust-Oleum you can buy in the store) and I couldn't be happier. I had https://www.premiumgaragefloors.com/ put it on for me. It wasn't cheap, but they did a great job. It took them about 6 hours to prep it and then another 5 hours to get the paint on. But they did it all in one long day. The cost was around $2000 for my 500 sq ft garage. That was for two coats, then vinyl chips, then a clear coat, and the walls painted with a single coat. It looks great and I've got a 5 year warranty against damage, but I've done plenty of jacking up cars, dragging heavy parts around, spilling fluids, etc. and it has never even started to look like peeling or chipping.
 
The Rust-Oleum guys claimed that the epoxy mixture they could put down was a different, stronger mixture than the one you could buy from them due to EPA regulations. Of course, that could have been a lot bull, but the smell from the stuff was so strong that we had to abandon the whole house that evening and spend the night elsewhere.
 
You may find that prep work (or $$$ if you hire it out) is significantly less if the floor hasn't had oils stains and such on it. So if you haven't moved the car in yet you might want to hold off until the finish is ready.

I used a commercial outfit and the paint (4 years now) appears indestructible... but I do get tire marks, possibly from the rubber gassing out into the floor.
 
jdubois, not fur nuttin but thats a 20x25 foot area fur $2000.00, yikes that sounds kinda steep to me. and im a contractor. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
 
anthony7777 said:
yikes that sounds kinda steep to me.

Yeah, I know it wasn't cheap. It worked out to about $4/sqft. I got a few quotes from people who would do it for about half that, but I didn't a good feeling from them. The Rust-Oleum guys were the only ones who weren't going to use an off the shelf product, were the only ones who would schedule me within the near future, and the only ones who promised to get it done in one day, and the only ones to give me a 5 year, no questions asked warranty (at least that I actually believed would be honored). So I paid top dollar to get what I wanted when I wanted it.

Here's the final result:

back.jpg
 
WOW!!! Floor covering with a 308 attached! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/jester.gif
 
DANG!!! Make sure you have NO ignition sources prior to application. We`d hate to loose any of you to a horrendous explosion or anything.
 
Geez, Kerry. Where's yer sense of ADVENTURE?!?! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif
 
I have a really unique covering on my garage floor. It looks just like random oil and grease stains. That way, when there is a leak from a vehicle, it just blends right in. It wasn't very expensive for this miracle coating, and in fact I did it all myself! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/square.gif
 
Back
Top