Garage floor coating

We received the keys to our new house on a Wednesday evening and were planning on moving in on Saturday which was the first of the month. We knew we wanted to coat the garage floor before moving in because once we were in, we knew we would never have the chance to do it again without having to move a bunch of stuff around. Doing our homework, we decided to go with Rust-Oleum's Epoxy shield because of price and the amount of coverage it will do. We have a four car garage so we bought two 2.5 car garage kits for about $106.00 each. In addition to that, we bought a squeegee, a couple of paint brushes, roller brushes, a heavy duty scraper to remove hard things, and other various items listed in the directions. The floor was 6 years old with cars parked in it every day. There were oil spots, lots of dirt and grass, and other things that had to be scraped up. A floor that size would take a lot of scrubbing so we rented a power washer from Home Depot. A reasonable price for 24 hours but you could probably do it in 4 hours if you had everything prepped and ready to go.

The cleaning is the most important part. It turned out that I cleaned the floor 4-5 times. First, I swept the entire floor as well as I could. Then I power washed it from back to front to let gravity help drain the water out. After power washing a section, I used the squeegee to push the water off in order to help it dry properly. It was recommended to let it try for about 24 hours then after it dried, I cleaned the oil spots with a degreaser found at Home Depot. The directions are listed on the bottle then I washed the area again. In order for the epoxy to stick best to the concrete, it must be etched. A power etching solution came with my epoxy kit but can be bought at Home Depot. Follow the directions well then wash again. This time I just rinsed the etching solution off and used the squeegee again to push the water off the floor. It's imperative to let the floor dry completely so I waited a day and a half just to make sure. Now is the fun part - painting the floor. Paint a section then sprinkle the confetti on the area. Use as much or as little as you'd like. We had 4 bags but only used 3 so we could have sprinkled much more than we did. I'm very happy with the result so it doesn't matter we had extra. Use a brush to get corners, walls, and seams. Do your best during the power washing and scrubbing to get all the pebbles and debris out of the area. Once you start painting, you will see debris but make sure it isn't big as it will cause the epoxy not to stick to the concrete.  Continue painting sections of the floor and sprinkling confetti however you please. Start at the back and work your way forward to give yourself room to maneuver and not paint yourself into a corner. We decided to paint only to the line where the garage door came down on. That was our personal preference but you can paint as far out as you wish. Just make sure you've cleaned and etched everywhere you want the paint. The kit we bought had the paint and epoxy in one big bag that was separated from each other by a seal. When ready, you roll the paint into the epoxy breaking the seal and the two mix. Mix and knead well for a couple of minutes then pour into a paint tray so you can roll it onto the floor. We also used a little pail to pour a good amount into so the painter doing the wall and seams with the paint brush would have paint with which to work. We only did the floor but you can go up the concrete foundation as far as you want. I knew we would have extra so I was fairly liberal with the amount of brushing I did on the walls and seams. Also, the areas we knew the cars would eventually be parked got a bit thicker coating. Again, because we knew we would have extra, we put down a coat, let it dry for a few minutes, then re-painted another coat.

Cold storage lighting

One of the projects I really wanted to do as soon as possible was to put more lighting in my cold storage. It had one light above the entrance but it extended far enough that not much light was able to reach the end of the room. So the entrance had plenty of light but the end didn't have any. At first I contemplated extending lights off the origins light down to the end but it wouldn't give light to my next project - can storage. The lights would be right above the can storage on the wall resulting in poor lighting to see what cans you are looking for. The only solution was to install lights in the middle of the room so everything was lit. It took 4-5 hours but that's because I'm not a creator but a copier and there weren't any solutions I could find that met my needs so I had to invent my own.

The strip is a grey handy box I found at Home Depot for $0.88 and 1/2" conduit with connectors. I have 12 gauge wiring with basic light housing bought at Lowe's for $1.50 each. I had to drilll through the metal holding up the concrete to create the cold storage using a 3/8" heavy metal bitand a 3/8" bit on a hammer drill to create the holes. Then I screwed concrete anchors where needed. The boxes have a hole where you can drill through and I used a one hole hangar to keep it secured in place. There are two hole but I really didn't want to drill an extra hole that wasn't needed. It is only to hold up a very light conduit so it didn't seem necessary. All in all, I probably spent $40-50 which includes a couple of new drill bits. I'm very pleased with the end result and if I can do it, so can you.