Been working on garage projects lately. In preparation for the epoxy coating, I had to make overhead shelving to store some of our stuff so the two main stalls could be completely empty. The shelf is 20' long, and 28" deep. I built it using 10' sections of electrical conduit struts, and 1/2" threaded rods between them. I used structural screws to tap into the ceiling beams, and the wall side rests on a 2x4 that is screwed into the wall studs. There are 10 grates total, each held onto the 2x4 with big staples, and on the front with a bunch of big zip ties. It actually ended up being very strong and stable, it holds several hundred pounds easily on each side, I was hanging from the lower bar and it didn't flex. Final step will be to paint the 2x4 to match the garage walls.
Last week I started prepping my garage floor for epoxy coating. I used the Rustoleum Professional floor coating solvent based epoxy. I purchased three kits total, but only did 2 stalls for now, the third stall will be done at a later time. First I mixed all three gallons of base coat "Part B" in one big bucket so the color will match, then poured them back into the individual gallons.
Tuesday I did a dawn scrubbing and couple rinses, Wednesday I did the degreasing stuff and a rinse, and then Thursday I did the acid etching and a couple rinses. Got all the water off, towel dried, and let it dry two full days. Spent about 9-10 hours in prep for the two stalls. Saturday afternoon was my first coat of epoxy. Went pretty well but I went too thin and ended up with extra paint so I just did some areas again trying to get it even. After 24 hours you could see it was pretty blotchy. Sunday I did the second layer of epoxy, and knowing that it would take even less paint since there were no more pores to fill, I went extra thick on the paint. Seemed to come out with a pretty nice shine, but you could see some faint lines between the areas that had some time between them, got a little too dry while I was putting the flakes down I think. Overall I was pretty happy at this point, but I noticed you could hardly see the flakes, the floor was glossy and reflective but the flakes were not, so they were like voids, you just saw black, not the actual color. Today I put on the clear coat, and went pretty thick again. Just took this picture and the clear has pretty much tried to the touch, so it should retain the same shine. All of the previous lines are now gone and you can see the color chips way better because there is a gloss coat over everything (Emily even commented that the color stands out a lot more now). I also added an anti-slip into the top coat, reminds me of little sugar or salt crystals.
Now I just hope I did the prep well enough, and that it doesn't peel or bubble up.