Question:
I am thinking about covering my garage floor with indoor/outdoor carpet.
(Painting hasn't worked as I'm sure you know). Any advice, comments or
recommendations?
Answer:
-The pertinent comment from the person against painting the garage floor is "why
paint what you're only going to park on?"
If you work under your own car (brakes, suspension, muffler, oil changes,
coolant and trans fluid changes), do shop work (wood or metal cutting/shaping),
bring summer parties to the garage on rainy days, etc., then the garage is far
more than a parking spot. I've heard of people who always have their family
gatherings in the double garage of the son's new house. No other area big
enough for the entire group. Lots of uses beyond just parking a car, for a lot
of people.
-I checked into garage floor painting, and came to the conclusion that a
2-part epoxy is the only way to go. I want to work on cars in the
garage, so there will be numerous oil spills, brake fluid, gaslone, etc.
on the floor that will need to be cleaned up. Luckily, my whole garage,
including the floor, was in terrible shape, so last year we did a major
rehab which included pouring a new concrete floor. Now I have a
pristine floor that I plan on coating with a 2-part epoxy. One of the
imperitives is that the floor must be clean, free of ANY coating, and
then etched with acid to get the epoxy to stick. So if you already have
a layer or two of paint, it needs to come off before doing epoxy.
Unfortunately I don't have any good suggestions on how to remove old
coatings.
Regarding the argument against painting garage floors, I believe it is a
benefit to having some coating on it to keep spills from soaking in.
I've stepped on more than one oil soaked concrete floor and felt my feet
start to slide. I think its a tremendous help to have a coating on the
floor to facilitate cleanup. Regarding the aesthetics, I simply like
the look of a nicely finished floor rather than an ugly oil stained
floor. I painted the whole inside of my 2 car garage white just to
brighten it up a bit and reflect light better. Mostly aesthetics,
little actual functionality. If you are working on the wheel of a car
in the back corner of the garage, sometimes it gets a bit dark back
there and white walls help. Also, when I'm trying to fix a rather
perplexing problem on a car (I have a Jaguar E-type which continues to
perplex me in many respects ;-) ) it helps that I'm standing in a more
pleasant atmosphere while I'm pondering what to do about the latest
apparently insolvable problem and I'm going to have to explain to my
wife why I need to spend another $1000 on something. Anyone who has
ever tried restoring an old car can attest to the fact that there are
occasions when you need a little morale boost. IMHO, standing on a nice
clean garage floor rather than a dirty one helps just a little with that
much needed morale boost.
