How a Garage Floor Is Prepared for Coating

An empty, inspected slab

The car, the mats, and the soaked cardboard need to be gone. Stored paint and solvents should be out of the dust and away from resin. The crew should be able to see oil, a previous sealer, cracks, and the joint layout. Tell them if you have used a concrete densifier or a tire-shine product that oversprayed the floor. Those details change the grind.

Grinding to a profile, not a shine

A shrouded diamond grinder is the usual garage tool. The aim is a clean paste and a profile the coating data sheet allows, often discussed using ICRI concrete surface profile chips. Polishing the floor shiny is the wrong direction. Edges near the door tracks and the wall need hand work or the peel starts there. Shot blasting is less common in a small residential garage but not imaginary on a large bay.

Dust control is part of the service. Ask how the vacuum is filtered and how doorways into the house will be isolated. Silica dust from concrete is a real exposure for the person grinding. It is not a task this guide will walk you through doing yourself.

Oil, cracks, and moisture

Oil is ground out, cleaned, or excluded. A stain that remains is a conversation before the flake hides it for a month. Joints and cracks get a treatment that matches whether they move. Filling every line with a hard product feels tidy and can crack with the season. Cracked concrete explains that choice.

If the slab darkens whenever the apron is wet, say so. Moisture testing is not automatic on every dry-looking garage, and it is not optional just because the sample board was pretty. The quote should say what was decided.

Only then the coating

Resin goes on a vacuumed floor inside the temperature window, with the mix ratio the manufacturer printed. Preparation that is rushed at dusk, followed by a fast topcoat in the cold, is how schedules beat chemistry. Garage coatings and preparation quotes are the request paths. Ask for prep as a described line.