I put an epoxy coating on my garage floor last year. As I mentioned in the post on my website, I wasn't all that thrilled with the way the color turned out, and after living with it for a year I decided that I would make a second attempt to get a color I liked.
Background
Here's the bare concrete floor I started with last year:
Here's the "after" picture from last year:
And here's a close up of the epoxy I used last year.
It's a little hard to tell from the picture, but the base coat of epoxy, which was called "tan," really looks more yellow. The flakes that I used in the floor were a mixture of black, white, and gray. After living with the floor for a year, I concluded that the gray flakes didn't have enough contrast with the yellow base coat and just made the floor look washed out.
Attempt #2
I used iPaint.us's "Epoxy Kote" product for the base coat both this summer and last summer. Aside from the color, I've been happy with the performance of the product, i.e., it hasn't chipped, I haven't experienced any hot tire lift, etc.
Last year I bought iPaint's simulated granite kit (http://www.ipaint.us/sigrfl.html). I wouldn't recommend buying the kit for 3 reasons. First, the top coat in that kit is epoxy, which is a little amber colored, and not as good as urethane. I couldn't find a source for urethane last year, but this year iPaint has started selling it. Second, the paint flakes they sent me weren't very uniform in size, and this year I've found other paint flakes I like better. Third, you can pick your exact base coat color and flake color(s) if you don't buy their kit.
The materials I used this year were as follows:
Base Coat: Epoxy Kote, color D41:
http://www.ipaint.us/poshwh.htmlPaint Flakes, 2 parts black to 1 part white: http://www.adpolymers.com/. I also ordered samples from JNK products, and their paint flakes also would have been fine: http://www.jnkproducts.com/epoarmor.htm. They couldn't offer me any discount on my quantity, so I went with adpolymers', but price aside it was a toss up. Based on what I'd read online and talking to a professional installer, I bought 50 pounds of flakes for my 3 car garage. That was WAY too much. I used only about 10-15 pounds. If I had used even 25 pounds I wouldn't have be able to see the base coat at all. So I have a lot of flakes left over. I was glad I painted a test patch first and then bought samples of the flakes and sprinkled them on the test patch (after it's dry) to see what color combination I wanted. You can just vacuum them up when you're done. JNK has a ton of different colors and shipped very quickly. I bought about a dozen different color samples, and I was surprised at what I ended up with -- simple black and white. I've got twice as many black flakes as white, but not because I like black. When you look at the floor you'd think the black and white flakes were broadcast equally. I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't done the test patch first.
Spiked shoes. You can also buy the spiked shoes at adpolymers that allow you to walk on the wet epoxy to broadcast the paint flakes. The spiked shoes make it way easier to broadcast the flakes well.
Top Coat: Moisture Cure Urethane for the top coat: http://www.ipaint.us/clwomocuhigl.html. I can't vouch for the long-term performance of the urethane top coat, but I will say that it looks absolutely fantastic at this point -- far better than the epoxy top coat I used last time. It really is crystal clear. It's supposed to be much tougher than epoxy too, but like I said, I won't know for sure until I've had it in my garage for awhile. Couple tips about that -- you're definitely going to want a respirator when you apply it -- the fumes are incredibly noxious, even with two 20" box fans going. You can get an AO respirator for about $30 at Home Depot or Lowes that works well. Second, the directions say don't put it on too thick or it will get milky. As far as I could tell you could do several thin coats, however. If I had it to do over again, I'd do a third coat of the urethane just because it looks so darn good. The stuff is so shiny that it's hard to tell where you've put it down already; I ended up going through my garage before doing the second coat and putting pennies on the floor on the spots I'd missed so I'd be sure to get them the second time. I had to look at the floor from several different angles to find all the spots.
Summary of Steps
My whole process was (keeping in mind I already had epoxy on my floor):
Day 1: Scarify existing epoxy surface; wash with TSP; rinse *very thoroughly*; squeegee off excess water. You wouldn't need to do this if you were starting from scratch with bare concrete, but you would need to acid wash your floor, flush it with clear water, then TSP wash your floor and flush it with clear water.
Day 2: Base coat of Epoxy Kote
Day 3: Second coat of Epoxy Kote and broadcast paint flakes onto the surface. The spiked shoes are key to doing this well. It's also a good idea to throw the flakes up, not down, so you get a better distribution.
Day 4: Rest day -- allow epoxy to cure (the iPaint contact told me to wait 48-72 hours to apply the urethane, but there's a small window here in which the epoxy is cured enough that it can be top coated but not so much that the urethane won't adhere to it.)
Day 5: scrape paint flakes (very important step that I didn't do last year -- makes the floor much smoother); blow them away with an electric leaf blower; apply first urethane top coat. You can get the floor scraper at Lowes or Home Depot.
Day 6: Scrape paint flakes again; blow them away again; and apply second urethane top coat
I haven't actually parked my car in the garage yet. The iPaint.us guy I talked to said to wait for 7 days, but I'm waiting for 14 just to be safe. I dragged my heavy refrigerator across the floor last night (after 7 days) and the floor was absolutely unaffected, so it would probably be fine to park my cars in the garage now, but I'm waiting anyway.
Here's what it looks like:
Here's a little closer view:
And here's an extreme close up of the paint flakes -- you can see the flakes and also get a good sense of how shiny the urethane is:
I went through an intensive waxing program on both my car and my wife's SUV over Memorial Day weekend. I was inspired by a picture of a black Porsche on Chemical Guys' Website at http://www.chemicalguys.com/MIRROR_SHINE_p/gap_104.htm. I wanted to try their Wet Mirror Finish glaze, and I also wanted to finish polishing my wife's SUV, which I had started last summer. (In other words, I needed to start over.) This post describes my experiences with both cars.
Wife's SUV (black)
I started by buffing the SUV. The SUV's finish is in "good" shape, in that my wife keeps her vehicle pretty clean, but it wasn't in pristine shape, in that she doesn't wax it every other week like I do with my car! After trying several polishing products (including Griot's Machine polish 2 and 3 and Chemical Guys' (CG's) All In One polish, I settled on my old stand by, Meguiar's Crystal polish as producing the clearest, deepest shine. (You can get this stuff at places like Schuck's and Pep Boys.) The Griot's stuff just didn't seem to do anything (maybe because the finish was not clean enough to start with), and the CG polish actually produced some hazing. It definitely could have benefited from claybarring, but I wasn't that committed to working on the SUV.
I then tried all my new wax products on her car, and I ended up back up using Chemical Guys' Butter Wet Wax just as I did last year -- it just seemed to produce the deepest, most reflective black color. That stuff has also had amazing longevity on her car. I waxed it in July 2006 and it was still beading very well in May 2007. It might have something to do with her using the CG Extreme Bodywash with Synthetic Wax/Gloss Enhancer. Maybe there's something to their claim that that product actually adds a little wax to your car as you wash it.
My Car (Pewter, basically gray with a hint of tan)
I clay barred my car twice. I didn't set out to clay bar it twice, but after I claybarred it the first time I wanted to try claybarring it with a solution of a few drops of car shampoo in a spray bottle of water. I found that created some suds, which seemed messy, but it was way slipperier than the speed shine I'd been using as the lubricant, and I knew it was dirt cheap so I felt more comfortable using a lot of it, and I found the effect to be noticeably smoother than the initial claybarring had been. So I went ahead and re-claybarred my whole car.
I then tried various polishes on my car, and I can't swear that any of them made any difference. I kind of thought Griot's Machine Polish 3 made the car shinier, but I really couldn't tell. Then I tried the glazes and sealants, which is where the real action turned out to be.
1. CG Wet Mirror Finish also seemed to haze the finish a bit on my car, again, which I couldn't believe after seeing the pictures of the Porsche on the CG website, but that's what it looked like to me.
2. CG FS Pure Acrylic Crystalline High Gloss sealant -- seemed OK, but not the best.
3. Black Magic Wet Shine Liquid Wax -- this had scored tops in Consumer Reports recent ratings, but it didn't work well on my car at all. I couldn't get the stuff off my car! It was a lot like when you use too much Zaino. I wiped and wiped and wiped, and it just wouldn't come off. (I actually did this before Memorial Day weekend, so it literally got washed off my car before trying the rest of the waxes.)
4. CG Extreme Shine EZ Creme Glaze with Acrylic Shine II -- This was the clear winner for me. The shine was noticeably improved, and the second coat was even better than the first. After putting this stuff on, I was reluctant to put any kind of top coat over it because I didn't want to reduce its shine. Since Memorial Day weekend I've put on 6 more coats of this stuff. This is the only product I've ever used that truly seems to be layerable. Every application of it seems to bump up the shine another notch.
5. CG 5050 Wax. I ended up topcoating with this wax. I tried several other products on top of the EZ Creme Glaze, and this was the only one that didn't seem to dull the shine. I don't think this improved the shine in the indirect light in my garage, but it didn't hurt it, and I think it might have improved the shine in direct sunlight. With my light-colored car, shine in direct sunlight has become my holy grail. I'm not 100% sure whether the EZ Creme Glaze or the 5050 wax is responsible for the reflectivity under direct sunlight. Right now I don't have the 5050 on my car, and I think the reflectivity in direct sunlight is worse without the 5050 wax. In indirect light, I think it's better.
The main drawback with the CG 5050 wax is STATIC. Holy cow. You can almost see the dust getting sucked onto the car's finish after you put on this wax. My microfiber towel was literally crackling with static electricity as I removed the wax (and I am not making that up).
The EZ Creme claims to be anti-static. I don't know if it's "anti" static, but there isn't any static applying it or removing it. When I went out to the garage the morning after I'd put the 5050 on my car, my car had attracted a fine layer of dust already -- and that's just sitting in a clean garage.
Summary: One clear standout product for my car -- EZ Creme Glaze. And two clear standout products for my wife's SUV: Meguiar's Crystal Polish and Chemical Guys Butter Wet Wax.