Newkirk Wallcovering and Painting

Convert your garage into a home office - painting a garage floor

Clean up prior to floor painting After sweeping the floor and removing all of the construction dust and dirt it's time to finish the concrete floor with an epoxy paint. Epoxy types of paint come in two parts that have to be mixed together. One part base paint and the other is the epoxy. Here I'm pouring in the epoxy into the gallon can provided.

Tools needed to paint flooring Using standard painting tools like a latex painting brush, roller, pan and extension pole are all that is needed. Also I have a bucket of paint flecks which will be used on the floor as it is being painted to create a random pattern or design. There are two types of epoxy paints both latex and alkyd (oil) based. We chose the latex version for two reasons, easy clean-up and we have an interior surface that doesn't require the heavy duty qualities of the alkyd based epoxy floor paint.

Cutting in with the epoxy paint Once the paint was mixed together evenly you normally have a 3 hour window of application time to work with. So once you start there is no turning back. Here I'm cutting in the outside edges with a latex brush. The epoxy paint is very thick and it makes cutting in a bit of a challenge. This process was slow but rest assured once the roller hits the floor things will move along much quicker.

Painting the garage floor When I'm rolling out a section of floor I want to make sure that the epoxy paint goes on evenly but is also thick enough to let the flecks of paint that make up the design adhere to it. I like to paint about a 4'x 4' section and then randomly sprinkle on the flecks of dry paint provided with the floor finishing kit.

Adding the flecks Hey!, this is the fun part. Creating a random pattern in the floor by sprinkling a handful or two of the multi-fleck paint chips was more fun than work. The chips provided with this particular kit were made up of three different colors, black, white and dark grey. They should look great over a pewter grey base coat.

Painting garage floor Here I'm continuing with the same process of cutting in the edges, rolling out a 4' x 4' section and adding the flecks as I move across the floor. Sometimes as I rolled the base coat I would paint over the flecks as I lapped the paint in an attempt to keep it all wet and workable. Not to worry though, a light sprinkling of the paint flecks and all was well again.

Painting garage floor This type of latex epoxy floor paint is highly recommended for any commercial or residential use in areas where carpet or any other high maintenance flooring is not necessary. This type of flooring is not only attractive but very durable and somewhat inexpensive. We were able to do this entire office floor for about $80.

Finished product Voila! Here we have a completed multi-fleck, low maintenance, highly durable painted floor in the new office space. Hey!, It won't be long before it's move-in day for my client. Just need to let this floor dry for a few full days before we give it any heavy traffic.

Finishing touches My client picked out a nice ceiling fan that had silver and pewter in it which I thought brought out the flecks in the new latex epoxy floor nicely.

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