Epoxy Saga

Our first 5 days of ownership of this fixer upper involved cleaning, prepping and epoxying the garage floor. Don’t be fooled, the Epoxy saga was not really a man thing even though all you see in our photos are the men…it was a combined effort.

We had to complete the following steps:

STEP 1: DEGREASER + POWER WASH

The first step in our epoxy saga was to degrease the garage floor. We used 2 types of liquid degreaser from Home Depot, first we tried the less intense version and then realized that the heavy duty stuff was required. After 2 rounds of degreasing liquid, scrubbing then power washing we found there were still a few spots (ok more than a few) that the water beaded off of. So on to plan B…powdered laundry soap…yes…I will explain.

: Degreaser & Scrubbing

: Power Washing

STEP 2: LAUNDRY DETERGENT + WAIT

When the degreaser didn’t do the job entirely I hit up google and found that powdered detergent is good a soaking up residual grease. I set out to the Superstore to obtain cheap detergent and landed myself a pail of noname laundry soap…a 5 gal pail! The next day I went and bought a second pail…who knew 5 gallons of soap wasn’t going to be enough?!?

: A little water

: and a lot of laundry soap…this is only the 1st bucket

STEP 3: SHOVEL + POWER WASH

After letting the detergent sit on the concrete for about 36 hours we scraped it up with a shovel and power wash away the residue. Simple enough…and guess what…the floor looks pretty clean and no water beading! On to the epoxy steps!

: Power Washing

: Getting the water out

STEP 4: MIX EPOXY

The directions for the epoxy portion are pretty simple. Mix the epoxy components according to the brand directions. We used a Behr product because we found someone selling an unused kit on Craigslist.

: Mixing

: It takes 2

STEP 5: ROLL ON + SPRINKLE

And then…the roll. Just like any other paint product, epoxy rolls on quickly and easily. The kit that we bought came with a bag of sprinkles which are in a variety of colours – grey, white, black – to add variation on the floor and to camouflage any imperfections. Yes our floor will have imperfections despite our relentless efforts prepping it.