Bill,
garage floor coatings are an emotional topic. just go to garagejournal.com and research it. he was here about 7 days if i recall.
i researched the daylights out of it. a friend of mine is on executive staff of shasta pools, a large national pool builder and he referred me to the manufacturer of some of their cement coatings. in turn that manufacturer (who was in phoenix) met with me and referred me to carmen of american floor coatings.
http://www.wecoatamerica.com/Products.html
carmen is a one man shop who has been doing this for close to 30 years and is very professional and quality oriented.
there are epoxy and urethane floor coatings. epoxy for the top is thicker, but not as scratch resistant as urethane and epoxy yellows when exposed to sun. urethane alledgedly does not. carmen does a lot of commercial buildings, hangers, churches etc and i went with his airplane hanger floor system with kinda medium to heavy chips.
he was very flexible and we had the primer coat and medium coat custom colored to our exact color we picked. he also got us sample bags of different color chips and we experimented for days with different mixtures of chips till we got exactly what we wanted. and the mancave has different chips than the main garage. not many companies would let you do that.
he had two huge diamond grinding machines and spent an entire day grinding the floor. then two days of patching it to be as perfect as possible. he sanded down the patches and also pressure washed the floor.
the colored primer coat was a 2 part water based epoxy. put on heavy. that dried overnight and the next day he cleaned the floor and then did the aliphatic urethane that is solvent based and a two part as well (urethane and hardener) he did that in small sections and then threw the chips in (and he was a master at that).
once he was done with that, (he started at 6am each day and was done by noon or so). the next morning he used a metal scraper and dutifully scraped the entire floor to get the chips that were partially loose or standing up off.
then he blew the whole place out with a backpack yard blower and did a top clearcoat of the same aliphatic 2 part urethane. there is still some texture in the floor from the chips so it is not slick like glass.
like i said, there are a zillion opinions on this stuff. carmen was meticulous, very skilled and nice when dealing with tough customers like darlene and i who are into the details.
time will tell if it holds up, but not sure what else i would have done differently.
for sure it is not inexpensive but it sure makes the place look great and will be easy to clean.
thats my 2 cents worth and i am stickin to it
tom
