What we did
This was a 2-car garage with older concrete that had never been coated. We found a few cracks and some etching on the surface, which tells you the slab has seen some years. With no old coating on it, there was nothing to strip off, so the job came down to getting the concrete clean and sound enough to bond to. The floor measured 420 sq ft including the outside edge, and there were 40 linear feet of vertical concrete along the edges that we'd be coating too.
We started with diamond grinding, which takes off the surface sheen and contaminants and opens up the concrete so the base coat has something to grip. We grind instead of acid-etching because it gives an even profile across the whole slab, etched spots included. The few cracks were cleaned of loose concrete and filled before any coating went down, since an open crack shows through the finish and gives the coating a weak spot. We also recaulked the control joints.
For the coating itself, we used our polyurea garage coating system. The polyurea base coat went down first, and we broadcast the Tidal Wave flake to rejection, meaning we kept adding flake until the wet base couldn't hold any more. Once it set, we scraped and vacuumed off the loose chips. The 40 linear feet of vertical surfaces got the same system as the floor, so the seal runs unbroken where the slab meets the wall. Then came the clear polyaspartic topcoat, with aluminum oxide grit broadcast in for better traction underfoot.
The whole install took 1 day, and we cleaned up the site before we left. The floor was walkable after about 12 hours and ready for full use, cars included, after about 48 hours. If your garage has older concrete with a few cracks and some wear but no coating on it yet, this job is a fair picture of what to expect: most of the real work is in the prep, and the coating goes down in a day.
