Choosing the right material for your garage floor in Baltimore isn’t as straightforward as new homeowners might think. Baltimore has a damp climate. Even when your garage floor is concrete, it needs to be waterproof.
Marylanders are more likely than people in many other regions of the country to use their garage as a home gym. Your garage floor needs to stand up to the occasional dropped free weight. If you do car repair in your garage, you need to make sure the floor is not easy to scuff or scratch with toolboxes, jacks, or dropped tools.
Epoxy Flooring is Durable
Baltimore garage floors need to stand up to road salt. You also want a garage floor that will retain its color if it is exposed to bleach or acids and that is easy to degrease.
The best investment of your home improvement dollars is epoxy flooring in Baltimore. Here’s what you can expect from the experts in epoxy garage floors:
- Any good epoxy floor contractor will be licensed by the State of Maryland. (You are looking for someone who has a contractor’s license.) They will have good online reviews.
- The contractor you need can offer you designer finishes, such as terrazzo, metallic, stone, quartz, and granite, in a variety of colors.
- Your contractor will be able to expain how urethane and polyaspartic finishes will make your epoxy garage floor easier to clean.
- Your contractor will discuss your requirements for a safe, slip-proof floor with you. Epoxy is applied as dry flakes, and the both the small flakes that create intricate designs and the large flakes that give you big, bold colors can make a slippery floor. Your contractor needs to be able to explain how to get the color and finish you want with the safety you need.
- Your contractor should be an epoxy floor specialist, sufficiently confident of their work to give you a Lifetime Satisfaction Warranty.
Epoxy Flooring Installation Process
Once you have finished your search for “concrete epoxy flooring near me“, here’s what you can expect.
- Your contractor will spend the first day doing prep work. Cleaning your garage floor and removing detergents and solvents is a must, so the epoxy does not trap mold, grease, or debris. Your contract will etch the concrete so the epoxy will stick, and then sweep, vacuum, mop, and dry the floor.
- Epoxy is applied to your floor as dry flakes. Then it is sealed to your floor with a clear finish.
- You will need to stay out of your garage for up to 72 hours while the finish dries. This means you, your family, and your pets cannot walk into the garage for up to three days.
Hiring A Professional
When you choose an epoxy expert, you get a lot of choices that you can’t get with do-it-yourself.
Many “epoxy” floor kits in the big-box home improvement stores are really just latex paint mixed with some epoxy flakes.
Latex will only last six months to two years before it needs touchup work. Water-based epoxy won’t need any touchup work for three to five years. Solid epoxy can still look great 10 to 20 years after it is laid down. Epoxy can last as long as 50 years in low-traffic situations.
You can expect to spend $4 to $10 a square foot to get your new epoxy garage floor. You will pay at the higher end of the range when you want to color of the floor to be exactly right to match woodwork or the entryway to your home. Sure, you might pay just 75 cents to 3 dollars a square foot for latex paint for a doit-yourself project, but epoxy can last five to 10 times longer than latex.
Tags: garage floor coating, garage floor epoxy, garage floor paint
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