Phase 1: Floor Sealant
My first thing (practically a day-one house mod, really) I wanted to do in my house over almost EVERYTHING, was to take my still like-new concrete in the garage and epoxy seal it properly, for a nice, durable and long-lasting finish. Obviously I'm a big DIY-er, so I went the
Quikrete route. Each kit is ~$75 at Lowes, handles a 1-car garage per kit, and they make many colors of your choosing. I went with "Lazy River", a fairly commonly chosen color (for good reason) that is a light grey/blue.
Also, the kits you buy come with the tan/black/white flakes, which are friggen worthless if you go with any decent color - it's just a way for them to force you to get a more desirable combination. I chose to go with Graphite, which are black/grey/white flakes. Those are ~$8 per container, and I only used half of one to get plenty of coverage to suite my desires. Any more, and I thought the floor would be too "busy".
You start by doing a THOROUGH cleaning of the floor with water and a stiff brush. If you have oil stains or other extremely grimy stuff in the concrete, you need to remove all of this before proceeding. Once this is done, you squeegee the floor to remove puddles and prepare your acid etching liquid (each kit comes with some to mix with water, and its good for a 1-car garage obviously). They recommend to use a flower watering pot to distribute the mixture evenly, which I had mixed results on (was too easy to dump a lot before you could really spread it out). If you mixed correctly and your concrete isn't jacked up (previously sealed, excessively dirty, etc...), the liquid will foam when it hits the concrete for the first time.
I worked on 1/4th of the garage at a time with the mixture, working the liquid into the concrete with the stiff brush very thoroughly. This gets very tiring, quickly, FWIW. Once done, you rinse well, and proceed until the whole garage is done. After that, you MUST make sure to rinse all of the garage WELL - if you see a suds appearing kinda like soap, you need to keep rinsing and working that acid out of the concrete as much as humanly possible. It'd probably be helpful having a 2nd person brushing with a clean brush while you rinse to work it out, but none the less. The cleaning portion easily took a couple of hours I'd say - more people helping would be priceless.
After all that, you need to again squeegee the garage out, and let it sit OVERNIGHT (or at least 12 hours or so) to dry out COMPLETELY. Your concrete should feel kinda like a pumice stone if you did this all correctly. This was my garage after I completed it:
Assuming you did all of this correctly, your concrete should be coated AS SOON AS POSSIBLE - any dust, dirt, grime that lands on your concrete at this point is simply going to degrade the epoxy's ability to adhere correctly.
The epoxy comes in 2 cans: the epoxy itself, and the hardening agent. Once mixed, depending on temperature and humidity, you have anywhere from 1 hour to 2.5 hours to use ALL of that mixture, before you are supposed to discard it. PLAN WISELY - again, this is a portion where extra help is VERY VERY useful, especially for trimming. Also if desired (and I do recommend this), you can add a non-slip agent. In winter or when wet, without that stuff, the epoxy can be VERY slippery. I intended to avoid that, and added it in during the mixing process...its about $7 or 8, and 1 bag handles 2 gallons/kits.
So, once mixed and stirred properly, you begin by trimming. Instructions say you can mix your second batch after trimming is complete, but I don't recommend this for newbies doing this solo. If you have help with trimming and painting the floor, then go ahead and mix the 2nd batch as soon as the trimming is complete.
Trimming is the process of using a good brush (I recommend a 2.5-3" ANGLED TIP brush and/or tiny roller) to get all those hard-to-reach places, such as where your floor meets the walls. A large roller simply won't do it. This was DEFINITELY a bit time consuming - be liberal when putting it on, and work it into all the tiny holes (nice and deep preferably...huh huh...deep...) as much as possible to give a good finish/seal. If your floor/wall meet at a nice, fine angle and then goes up to drywall, I'd recommend using painters tape on the drywall BEFORE mixing your liquid, and painting that ENTIRE area. My garage, sadly, has odd angles at the foundation so I didn't bother going more than an inch or two up the side. No pics of my trimming since the clock was running for me (hot day, and only an hour to get it all on...).
As soon as trimming is done, you are ready to start the floor. Get some nice rollers, and 2 days before performing the job, THOROUGHLY wash your rollers! This will remove lint and other junk from new ones. It takes a good 2 days to dry them out, but I recommend wrapping some paper towels around them and squeezing to get as much moisture out before just letting them sit - the water just goes to the base and sits there, even after sitting overnight...
I worked in ~3'x6' sections - main reason for this being, any more and it'll be difficult to spread your flakes around. Put the epoxy on LIBERALLY - both my friend and I did the same thing: we felt we weren't sure if we were putting too much on, and we'd run out before finishing even half the garage. WRONG - I ended up with 2/3rds of a gallon left out of 2, EASILY. You WILL have enough!!!
Try to do long, even strokes (perverts) - get full coverage, and use firm pressure to work the epoxy into all those little cracks and crevices. After doing one solid 1st run, go at it again with even MORE epoxy, and get it on there. If desired once complete, shake some flakes on there.
Here's my in-progress picture:
Now, something I wish I'd done: Instead of simply putting epoxy directly next to the epoxy I'd just laid down, I wish I left walking paths all over my garage to get to all of the sections. This would have let me put down tons of epoxy WITHOUT putting flakes down immediately, and I could have judged how much epoxy I was going to have left to make sure to use it all. Then, flake the sections and epoxy all of my little walkways, eventually retreating out of the garage with the whole floor complete. It all worked out in the end, though.
Complete:
It looks uneven, but it has since dried and matched perfectly across the whole garage. The flakes are dense enough for me, and are a fantastic touch - a neighbor has the exact same color as me WITHOUT flakes, and his looks boring, IMHO.
Flake density:
In the end, I'm EXTREMELY pleased with the quality of the epoxy. Only time will tell on how long it lasts, but I've read many good reviews and in the end, they all say that it comes down to your prep work. Do good, and it'll last a long time. For $150 for both kits, it was all well worth it!