Garage Flooring in Glendale, CA

A garage on a level lot wears more or less evenly. A garage cut into a slope does not. The ground on the uphill side sits higher than the floor, so water moving through it reaches the back wall and the edge of the slab rather than spreading out underneath, and what shows first is a band of lifted coating along one wall while the rest still looks sound. At the other end a driveway falling toward the door puts rainwater at the threshold every winter. Neither is a fault in the epoxy that was used. A slope does one more thing and it works more slowly: a hillside pad is commonly part cut and part fill, and fill goes on consolidating for years after the concrete has gone over it. That is what puts a garage floor out of level rather than merely out of condition, and it is dealt with before any epoxy or polyaspartic goes near it.

With the slab settled, the remaining question is which of the two materials goes on top. Epoxy builds thicker, costs less to lay and is the more forgiving of the two over concrete that has already seen some life. Polyaspartic costs more and buys back time and color: it cures in hours rather than days, so the garage takes the car again inside the same week, and it holds its shade where epoxy slowly ambers. At a door that takes the afternoon sun, that difference shows at the threshold before it shows anywhere else. Which of the two, epoxy or polyaspartic, goes down is settled once the slab has been read rather than before it, and on a hillside garage that reading carries further than it does on flat ground, because the uphill edge and the door line can each want a different answer from the middle of the floor.

With the slab settled and dry, the floor going over it is three passes deep. First a pigmented base coat is worked into the open concrete, epoxy or polyaspartic according to how soon the garage has to be back in use. The flake goes into that coat while it is still wet, which is what keys the chip into the epoxy instead of leaving it sitting on the surface. Last comes a clear polyaspartic seal coat across the whole floor, and from then on it is the seal taking the wear and not the color underneath it. It is the build we lay in every garage we coat. What varies is the middle pass, and how much seal has to go over it.

That middle pass decides the look, and there are three ways to take it. Epoxy flake is where most Glendale garages end up, because a broken-up surface stops a working floor showing every mark. Solid color epoxy is the cleaner finish and the less forgiving of what lies under it. Metallic epoxy belongs in a garage you spend time in rather than one you park two cars in. Whichever it is, the finished floor is sealed wall to wall with no seam or joint where grit can collect. Spilled oil sits on top of the polyaspartic until it is wiped up rather than staining its way in, the tires do not take the surface up with them in August, and keeping it clean is a broom and, once or twice a year, a hose. The blends you can see before you order are laid out on one page. The rest of what we coat in Glendale houses is built the same three passes deep, room by room. Past the door the answer changes, because the concrete outside takes weather rather than tires.

Preparation is most of the job and its order is fixed. Oil comes out of the concrete before anything else, because a slab that is still greasy will reject whatever is laid over it. Then the old coating and any sealer are ground away until the concrete is open. Then the cracks and the pitting are cut out and filled flat. Only at that point does the work turn from repair into building a floor. Saw-cut joints stay joints and are not filled solid, since a crack stopped in one place simply arrives in another. Where the uphill edge reads damp, an epoxy vapor barrier goes down over the ground concrete first, a coat whose only job is to keep the moisture below it so the base coat grips what it is laid on. Most garages are finished inside a working day. The slab takes feet that evening and the car a good while later, and a polyaspartic build shortens that wait rather than removing it.

Pricing a garage is more straightforward than pricing most floors, because only four things really move the figure: how big it is, what the grinder turns up once the surface is off, whether the damp edge needs a barrier under the base coat, and whether the build is epoxy or polyaspartic. Most Glendale garages land between $5 and $7 per square foot, and a two-car floor is one day of work. Our rating is 5.0 from 120+ reviews, we are normally a couple of weeks out, and an estimate costs nothing. Send the size of the garage and a photograph of the floor as it stands through the quote form, or call (818) 359-3932, and we will come back with a figure.