Selling a house today requires all possible advantages. Remodeling your garage is an inexpensive way to get a head start. When a prospective buyer opens the garage door and sees a nice floor, cabinets, and wall organizing shelving, they get excited. The home has credibility, which gives the prospective buyer confidence that the home is solid.
Start with a high-performance liner
There are many options available. You may have seen kits available at home improvement stores. Don’t be fooled by the pretty box labeling with a pretty yellow or red sports car. Inexpensive epoxy paint does not have the ability to work on most concrete floors. The moisture found in each piece of concrete continuously emits steam and pushes the salts to the surface. This is what causes chipping and demand. It is caused by capillary pressure or in extreme cases hydrostatic pressure.
Inexpensive coatings are very thin and every blemish leaks out. A high performance epoxy is a thick coat of approximately 11-15 mils. Inexpensive, thin floor paints can be as low as 4-5 mils when wet and less when dry. Ask about thickness in thousandths of an inch before purchasing.
Surface preparation is critical for long-term performance
80% of all floor covering failures are due to improper surface preparation. Make sure to use a high quality crack filler or patch product. Lowering quality means trouble later. If your patch or crack delaminates, so will your coating. Again, just because the product says crack filler on the label doesn’t mean it will work.
Be sure to etch the concrete surface first. Professional applicators use a shot blast, which is a walk behind machine that shoots small ball bearings at the surface. This wears down the concrete making the surface feel and look like coarse sandpaper. This process increases the surface to which the epoxy adheres.
So effective is it to etch concrete with an acid. There are two types, gel and liquid acid. Liquid acids are often very weak, inconsistent, and over-saturate concrete with water. Again, moisture is the enemy of any coating. You can achieve the same result by etching your concrete with an acid gel. Gel acids have been a breakthrough for the DIY epoxy market. They are safe and easy to apply just by rolling and they work. The results are like shot blasting.
Chemical and hot tire resistance
You’ve probably seen painted garage floors peeling off the floor where the tires are traveling. Sometimes you will even see a road that follows extreme faulty tires where the tires stop. Tires get hot from friction with the road. This extreme heat will cause all but high performance epoxies to break down. When epoxies are mixed, the chemicals interlock like a chain that gives them strength. Inexpensive products do not have the ability to withstand extreme tire heat. Their crossover is weak.
Decorative chip systems
Concrete floors are never flat. They have ups and downs that are the result of human imperfection and how concrete heals. When you apply decorative chips in epoxy, you look away from imperfections and add a decorative result. You can apply a light chip transmission that slightly scatters the chips or a full-chip transmission that provides full coverage. Only a thick, high-performance epoxy will allow you to apply a full coat.
Cabinets and shelves
Once your floor is complete, you can think about adding cabinets and shelves. The complete flooring and cabinet package really creates the wow factor if you are looking to add value to a home. The garage remodel market is huge, but not everyone has made the investment. If you are a seller looking for a solution to make your property stand out, an investment of a few thousand dollars in your garage will make a difference.