The slab governs the outcome, so grinding is the first job rather than an afterthought. The bay is worked back to bare concrete, and off with it come old paint, any coating that has already let go, the curing compound from when the floor was poured, and oil that has soaked in below a parked car. That is only half of what grinding is for. A power-troweled surface is dense and closed, and until the machines have opened it an epoxy base has nothing to grip.
Then whatever the bare slab has been hiding gets put right, all of it before the first coat. Cracks are cut open, packed and taken flat so the finished floor reads continuously across them. The joints the concrete moves on are continued through the coating rather than sealed over, because a slab held rigid will crack somewhere of its own choosing. Damp rising through the concrete is stopped underneath the epoxy build. A rough slab is not a reason to say no to a garage. It belongs in what the job costs.
The floor itself is three passes: a colored epoxy base, flake or pigment dropped in while that coat is open, and a clear polyaspartic seal over the top. On site that is six to nine hours for a two-car bay, though each coat still needs its curing time before the next one follows. Where a slab has sunk rather than simply worn, leveling it comes before any coating, since a coating follows the surface it is given. And where the concrete is worth seeing, polishing is the other way to finish it.
In Fillmore the choice comes down to three epoxy finishes almost every time, and the difference that matters is how much the floor is asked to cover up. There is a sample of every blend we install, and setting one down on the floor usually decides it.
Most Fillmore bays are finished in flake. Colored chips go into the epoxy base while it is open, packed on until no concrete is left showing, and a clear coat above seals them permanently. The result has a light texture, which counts for something when a wet car comes in, and a pattern that swallows the grit, marks and dropped things a working garage produces. On concrete that has already done years of service, it hides the most.
Without chips you get solid color: pigmented epoxy beneath the same clear seal, holding a single tone right across. It is the cleanest of the three to look at. But there is nothing in it to break up a mark, so wear shows early, and it suits concrete that came up well under the grinder. Mid grays and muted neutrals are the usual choices. In a bay that gets used for more than parking, a single flat tone is what makes it feel finished.
Metallic epoxy is the outlier. Color is suspended in the resin and stirred as the floor sets, so what appears is unique to that floor and cannot be reproduced. That is why people want it, and it is also what you are accepting, because it does not exist until it is laid. Choose it for a bay that is on show rather than in service, and know a repair in it will always be findable.
Two things carry most of the price. Area is the first, and Fillmore bays we measure normally come out at 450 to 700 square feet. Slab condition is the second, because concrete in good order only needs grinding, while concrete that has broken up needs cutting out, rebuilding and grinding again before an epoxy base is worth putting down. Budget $5 to $7 per square foot for a Fillmore garage, with the on-site work taking a day.
The finish moves it as well. Of the three, metallic is the slowest for us to lay and solid color the quickest, with flake between the two. The sealing resin counts as well. Polyaspartic reaches working hardness in hours where an epoxy topcoat needs days, which is the reason one coat can follow another without a wait of days between them. Every price we give is read off the floor in front of us rather than a published rate.
Across 120+ reviews our score is 5.0, and the usual wait is about two weeks. Let us have the bay measurements and a picture of the floor as it stands, or ring (818) 359-3932, and a proper epoxy or polyaspartic price for your own garage follows.
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