A few years ago my dad epoxied his garage floor. He sent progress photos to our family text chain and I thought "cool, Dad." And then a few months later we came up to visit and I saw them in real life and exclaimed "COOL, DAD!" They were gray with white, blue and black paint chip flecks and just looked so nice. Every single time I came up I was impressed with how finished the garage looked. It was a total extension of the house and just so clean.
At the time, we in San Diego and had no plans to move. For awhile, I was thinking about having my dad help me transform our current home's garage floors while Paul was deployed but then, of course, Covid happened and so many of our plans changed.
As soon as we decided to move I thought to myself "in the next house we will epoxy the garage floors first." It's just such a relatively easy thing to do when there is nothing stored in there yet.
AND SO, it should come as no surprise that the first thing we did to Cripe Cottage is paint the garage and epoxy the floors. It might, however, come as a surprise to hear that I agonized over the epoxy color choice (the first decision of any project is by far the hardest decision for me). I take absolutely no credit for garage; my dad did it all. I am so thrilled with how it turned out.
Let's first look at some before photos.
Obviously, just painting the drywall white can make a huge difference. This is the third garage we have owned and the third we have painted white. Even if you don't spend a lot of time in the garage, it can be worth it to make the whole space look brighter and cleaner. We spend a ton of time in our garage (it's where I pack Get To Work Book!) and so for us, it's extra valuable.
To really finish it off though, I think it's fun to do the floors. For one, it seals the concrete, making the floor more durable and easier to clean. But mostly, I love the look. For me, it was an visual choice more than anything, for sure. My original plan was to go with this "sandstone" coating but unfortunately (at the time) it was sold out everywhere. I had no plan B (hence the agony of making a back-up decision) but after a trip to Lowe's I realized they sell a tint-able epoxy which opened up a bunch of color options.
Above is a photo of box my dad used. It's called Expoxyshield Garage Floor Coating Kit (and I am typing that all out for future googlers. It was impossible to find photo examples of different tints.) It took two of these to complete the full garage (it's about 23x23 feet). On the box, you can see the 9 "color tint" options (you just bring it to the paint counter and they mix it like paint). I choose Harbor Mist (top center) but, frustratingly, that color name (or any of the color names) don't appear to be in the product link above. The kit comes with beige, gray, white and black paint chip flakes to spread on the epoxy. It would have looked fine, of course, but I decided to order custom colors because... well... it's the same amount of work to spread custom chips and it wasn't too much more money to do something extra that I really wanted.
I found paint chips here in so many colors and ordered green, eggshell and tan. My dad blended them together in a box and spread them just like the kit ones would have been.
And so more after photos! (You'll notice in these photos the color sometimes looks more green and sometimes more almost teal. The lighting makes it look different! I would say in real life it's much more green than blue.)
I really, really love it. On the one hand it's not a "necessary" house project. But on the other (much larger) hand it's a total "sparks joy" project. I am so glad the original beige plan didn't work out so I could have fun green floors. All the thanks to Grandpa Frank for getting it done. He's very proud of his before and after photos (as he should be).
