Painting your garage floor

A painted garage floor tolorates neglect better than un-painted garage floors. Consider this - the garage is usually one of the most neglected parts of the house. Many people use the garage for storage of household items or other sentimental things that don't have a space inside the house - perhaps the stuffed moose head you got in college that the wife wont let you hang in the living room - or that collection of annual Sports Illustrated Swimsuit editions that really belongs in the "reading room".

If the garage is one of the most neglected areas of the home, then the garage floor has surly got to be the most neglected part of the garage. Not that there's much damage that can be done to the concrete flooring found in most garages, but if the its is used as designed - to store cars, then it's quite likely that oil and other automotive drippings will eventually make their way to the porous concrete floor, if they haven't already.

You've seen these garages before - the ones so tightly organized - every tool with a space and every tool in it's space. The floor is coated with one of those gray or red shade coating systems, or it could even be paint. Either way, it looks great, and you want it! Some tips, if you will, for painting your garage floor.

1) Consider your options

Choose your materials depending on the type of floor finish that you would want. There are other, more expensive options to using paint - a concrete garage floor can be treated with acid to give it a unique look, or coated with rust-oleum, or epoxy coating systems. Then there's options such as polyurethane flooring and tiles. These are all more expensive prospects compared to painting, so if good looks at the lowest cost is the situation what you're looking for (not that there's anything wrong with that) then lets stick to using paint.

2) Clean that dirty old floor

Quality results depend on quality preparation - just like anything else, painting a garage floor is no different. Industrial cleaners can be applied to remove old grease and oil prior to the job. Every home older than a generation or two has hosted previous owners whom lacked the appreciation of a fine workshop floor, or the fastidiousness to protect it in the first place.

3) Using Rust-oleum

Rust-oleum is one of the most recommended garage floor painting products available - especially cement floors. This product gives a quality finish to any concrete floor, and protects from harsh elements such as gasoline, oil, salt and acids. The rust-oleum paint kit includes surface cleaners and other materials which make it easy to apply this paint type coatings. The rally great thing about this type of coating is the beautiful finish it gives to a garage floor.

Don't take your garage floor for granted. Whether your garage stores sentimental items, a car or two, or all the above - a garage floor covered with a paint on coating system will be protected and look great for years to come.