Hey gang. thought i'd ask this up here and call on the collective wisdom of those with far more experience than i possess...

i am re-doing my warehouse garage to store the cars. Its about 8000 square feet. pretty big rectangular space. Right now there is an epoxy flooring on teh ground, sort of a grey/blue material, very warehouse-like. during some constructions, they whacked the floor with the wheels from some heavy equipment so im going to redo the flooring.

anyone have any great ideas for flooring that will really showcase the cars and be functional for the car collection?
was thinking of just epoxy again, given the size and potential cost....
but if someone has other great ideas, i'd love to hear them.

then also wondering if a different color would look better? saw some great photos on the forums of black flooring with some nice speckles/flakes within. looked really nice, but the photos were of a home garage and im not sure how that would then carry into a much larger space.
one concern would be hvaving a dark, black flooring, even if with sparkles/speckles, etc. and that it would look really dark once you rolled it out over the 8000 feet.

anyway, would love some ideas if you guys can muster a few up.

tx in advance,
sg

 

Could be quite expensive but what about tile?

 

8000 square feet thats gonna be awesome

 

It would helpful to have a few additional pieces of information to provide you with recommendations:

(1) Will this space primarily serve as a showroom or a working floor? If it is a working garage explain how much abuse the floor might be subjected to?
(2) How long do you envision owning this building? If you are looking to sell the building in the next ten years, a coating may be the direction to go as the lowest cost option.
(3) Having a budget will help drive a lot of your decisions.

A couple of ideas come to mind.

If you desire a coating, you have two choices: a solid color and an aggregate (chip) floor. The solid color floor will be your lowest cost option. An aggregate floor contains paint chips that are scattered into the base coat and topped with a clear coat. The advantage of a chip floor are threefold:

(1) They will disguise cracks and dirt much better than solid color floors;
(2) The natural orange peel will enhance traction. Some times floors can become slippery when wet and chip floors have an advantage in creating a higher coefficient of friction as a result of the natural variation of the orange peel;
(3) Many people prefer the appearance of granite or terrazzo that is associated with chip floors.

If you decide to go the route of a floor coating, I recommend doing your research first. There are a lot of good floor coatings on the market, but finding a qualified installer should be your highest priority.

My strong recommendation is to focus on contractors that can mechanically shotblast NOT acid etch, your floor prior to installing the floor. Most consumers skip over the most important step in installing a concrete coating: floor preparation.

Floor preparation is critical to the longevity of these coatings and this is particularly important in your case where an existing coating is present. More floor coating failures are attributed to the lack of proper floor preparation than any other single cause. I would venture to guess that 99% of all floor coating failures are associated with the installation of the product, not the product itself. Epoxy coatings can be a decent product. Installed properly you should expect 5-10 years of life from an “epoxy” coating.

Lets get back to the floor preparation. Even the most expensive and technologically advanced coatings will fail if the surface pre-treatment is incorrect or incomplete. Kindly allow me to use an analogy (perhaps it’s a poor one, but I think you will get the point quickly): Let’s say you wanted to paint a kitchen wall that had grease splatter on it. It wouldn’t really matter if you choose the highest quality paint applied by the highest qualified professional if the surface was not prepared adequately to be able to accept the paint.

The same holds true for your existing floor, which inevitably may be contaminated, or degraded to the extent that issues residing in concrete such as curing agents, sealers, oil, grease, moisture, dirt, laitance (this is a dusty particle that is naturally occurring in concrete. As it cures this mixture dries to form a crust or thin layer on the surface, known as laitance, which unless removed can cause floors to fail) … and other common contaminants such as the existing layer of paint you described, will need to be addressed.

All of these substances must be removed or addressed in order to eliminate potential threat that would prevent the proper bonding of a floor coating material. If your installer fails to address even one of these issue, adhesion of a coating may be compromised or in the worst cases be non-existent, leading to the floor coating delaminating.

The most common methods to prepare your concrete for a floor coating include acid etching, grinding and mechanical shotblasting.

Without going into too many details about each, in my opinion mechanical shotblasting is the fastest and most efficient method of floor preparation and laitance removal. Basically, it consists of a machine that operates much like a Zamboni, in that it removes a layer of the concrete surface. Pellets are blasted down at the concrete surface and the layer of concrete vacuumed. This method is not only effective at cleaning the concrete to accept a coating, but it also “profiles” the floor by creating a highly textured surface consisting of peaks and valleys for the coating to embed itself to provide better adhesion.

You can typically spend $0.75-$1.50 per square foot, depending on your market, for mechanical shotblasting service. Although other methods of floor preparation are adequate, you have a tremendous amount of coverage and personally, I wouldn’t take the risk of installing a product without addressing floor preparation as the highest priority.

Good luck with your project. If you would like some additional ideas and can offer up your budgetary expectations, I’d be pleased to share some additional ideas with you.

Best,

Chad Haas
Founder & Chief Gearhead
Vault

 

I would highly reccomend epoxy paint. The one that Home Depot and Lowes sell for $120 for the 3 stage process. That will cover an average 2 car garage. I have one on mine and I love it.

 

How about a checker board pattern The white is actually pretty easy to keep clean, and the black is as well. With the black, you can mop on a coat of wax now and then to really make it shine.

What I can tell you, is to skip the cheap epoxy you get at home depot, it won't last to anything more than parking on it (if it even holds up to that). This epoxy is made by Devoe Coatings, and was their Devran 220S heavy duty epoxy for shop flooring. About $100 per 2 gallon kit (1 gallon converter, 1 gallon epoxy). I would also sprinkle in a little of their sand grit to give some grip to the floor when wet.

Chad makes an excellent point as well. Without proper floor prep, it won't matter what epoxy you use, as it probably won't last. We prepped this floor by renting a large orbital floor buffer, used with big sanding pads. The floor did not have any oil contaminants on it previously, so our prep work was minimized. We did everything ourselves, from the prep to laying the epoxy (I can tell you that even in a large warehouse space, if you lay the epoxy without good ventilation, you will start to see pink elephants....this is how we came up with the checkerboard pattern.....we starting laying the white, and after about 45 minutes, we were like.......Dude.....you know what would look really cool....checkerboard! LOL).

 

dudes, thx for all your suggestions. i meeting the floor contractor today and he's gonna give me some ideas, and im gonna share all i've learned here with him. should be great.

regards,
sg

 

spg993tt sent you a pm.