Well Lou, you should think about doing it yourself. I think the kit from Home Depot costs about $100 to do about 400 square feet. So that is about 0.25 per square foot. So you can see how much you're being charged for the labor. The Rustoleum product is pretty good. I did it myself to my own small 2 car garage. Looks good! I used the beige/tan stuff.

Tom

Tom:

Thanks for the input about Rustoleum.

DIY is not for me. I'm of the female persuasion and been collecting social security for a few years now. I definitely prefer leaving the labor to others.

Lou

I have finished a couple of floors with a 'DIY' product from Lowes and I will never pay somebody to do it for me. The cleaning is very easy, however the step will change from one manufacturer to the next.

Here are the basic steps:

Sweep and mop floor
use a putty knife to take of standing debis like staniding oil stains ar gum.
use a concrete cleaner/stripper to take off oils, stains, and even the concrete sealen. - this is easy, but take your time and do it right! A poorly cleaned floor will fail.
hose off and 'squeegy' let dry
apply epoxy
its best to roll small sections because you want to roll a section the roll it again at a 90D angle.
Very easy and will last forever if you do it right.

I did 2 floors last summer. I would add the following for prep.....
Power wash
Muratic acid etch
Power wash
Power wash/squeegy
Dry over night
Paint

My garage floor is over 20 years old and has a slight rough finish to it. When we built the house at that time I did not want a shiny slick floor and have a troweled finish that can be walked on with bare feet but would not want to slide on it...

I think the floor is pretty clean and the muric acid and wash will be a plus. The squeegie part would not work so will have to mop up standing water and let air dry well.

The new finish should stick well and leave a much smoother finish I would think.

Does anyone know if there is any way to do half of the garage at a time? I don't have any place to put all of the stuff if I have to empty it out completely for a couple of days.

Dad had his done and it looks good except for some impecfections that were more or less in the floor prior to the application. The nice thing about having a professional do it is that you hopefully get a warranty! I can see where you could have trouble if you do not get the floor cleaned up properly. I have also read some posts (here somewhere I think) that it may not hold up real well down the road. I had thought about having my basement done with it but I thought it might not wear well with the kids running and playing....

I just did a garage and it turned out real nice. I'd recommend using the color flakes and the clear coat. Sportsman's Guide.com is where I got the epoxy. Only available in grey, but it's 1/2 the price of most places. I did another floor in white without the paint chips (from Home Depot), but this one in grey with paint chips turned out a lot better. Whether you pay or do it yourself I'm sure you'll be very glad you did. The garage will be a whole new place. Enjoy. Have a good time painting!

To answer the original question, $2 seems very suspicious. Get 3-4 estimates, dump the lowballer, check references, see a finished job and make sure they can provide you with a Certificate of Insurance. A legitimate business would provide one. Remember, you'll get what you pay for.

As for any DIY's, please don't skimp on surface preperation. You can use $150 a gallon material and without a properly prepped surface, it will fail.

Most pros arrive with at least 15k worth of prep equipment to a jobsite. If we thought a $5 bottle of muriatic acid could do the job, the multimillion dollor surface prep indusrty would go belly up.

Rent a diamond grinder or shot blaster and you get guarranteed results. Acid is very inconsistant and not gaugable. You are taking a huge risk on the main foundation of your flooring system.

As for DIY kits, understand that they are usually watered down systems made to be easy to use for the non pro end user. They are usually 50% solids or so. This means that the other half is either water or solvent. What this also means is when it cures, half of what you just put down will completely evaporate and leave you with half the product on your floor. Your 1 gallon of epoxy is really 1/2 gallon. The end result is a paper thin product that will not cover minor flaws and detirioration and one that will eventually wear dependant on usage. In this business, you really get what you pay for.

Home Depot sells an epoxy based floor paint. You get an 8-hour "open time" and it dries in 24- hours, covers 1 average garage floor for $75.00

We used this on the floor in our local fire station, it holds up very well, but if you have a vehicle that leaks oil or transmission fluid, the fluid will deteroriate the epoxy.

Rick

I recently did my garage and basement in epoxy. Looks great. I took a lot of pics to document the entire process, which was definitely harder than I thought it would be. I posted the pics at http://www.goodrum.cx/fall2007projects along with some write-up on what I did right and wrong. Hopefully your readers find the writeup useful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Epoxy Flooring

Hi there,
I think you may find this site helpful when looking at Epoxy flooring. This company breaks down the cost and claims you can save over eight hundred dollars by doing it yourself. Hope this helps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Do it yourself Epoxy

Go to this link:

Here is a link that might be useful: How to epoxy your garage floor