Garage Flooring: Should You DIY or Hire a Contractor?

So, you’re finally going to get that garage in shape. You’re tired of it looking like a giant junk-drawer and are ready to turn it into the organized hobby shop/vehicle showroom of your dreams. But before you start installing new cabinets and hanging tools, you first need to address that tired old concrete floor.

When it comes to garage flooring, you have many options when it comes to materials, ranging from floor paints to industrial polymer coatings. But one of the biggest decisions is whether to tackle the job yourself or to hire a professional contractor. After all, your local big-box home store probably sells everything from paints to polymers. Plus, how difficult can it be?

Well, if you want a beautiful, long-lasting garage floor coating… pretty difficult, as it turns out.

Here’s the thing: any garage floor coating requires meticulous surface preparation to work properly. That means pulling everything — and we mean everything — out of your garage so that the entire surface is accessible. Then it must be hosed, swept or blown completely clean. That means no dirt, no dust, no cobwebs, no leaves… no anything. 

And, if you’re going the polymer coating route (which you should;  garage floor paints simply don’t hold up), you need to scuff up or scarify the surface to give the coating something to adhere to. If you’re planning on doing it yourself, that means borrowing or renting an industrial walk-behind grinder of some sort and purchasing a serious filter mask.

Then there’s the drying time. The more durable coatings, such as polyaspartics, dry very quickly. This means that one person alone can’t complete the job, because someone needs to be applying the material as the other person is mixing up a batch. So, you’ll need to get help from one or two friends or risk botching the entire job.

The bottom line is, installing a garage floor coating is a major hassle — one you do not want to have to repeat in a year or two. So, if you are going to do it yourself, it’s worth it to invest the time and money to get the right equipment and really focus on adequately preparing the surface before you apply a single drop of coating.

Or, you could take the easy route and hire a professional contractor.

A reputable garage floor coating contractor will have the equipment and expertise to do it right the first time. Plus, you’ll likely get a guarantee on the work done, so you can rest assured you won’t have to pull everything out of your garage and repeat the whole process in a year or two.

As they say, if you want professional results, you need to hire a professional. In any case, we know which route we’d take.

So, now it’s time to do some research, put together a budget and begin turning that dream garage into reality!