BLACK epoxy game room floors?

gibbous

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I'm getting ready to epoxy coat the garcade floor, and I want to do black. Has anyone done black and regretted it? I think it looks sweet (pic from the internet, NOT MY FLOOR):

Garage-Epoxy-Flooring-Nashville.png


I wasn't sure if I was going to seal it, but damn, looking at that pic, I think I have to.
 
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they make clear gloss epoxy too so if you did like black and went in and made some art you can seal that art in with clear epoxy too
 
Anyone know where to get those kinds of uv flakes locally? I can order them from Michigan, but would need to do overnight to get them here on time.
 
That looks badass! My gameroom has a slab floor, but I went with carpet to make it easier on creaky old arcade gamers. ;)
 
Have you already put down the epoxy? If so, you're too late to spread flakes. You need to sprinkle the flakes when the epoxy is setting up, still tacky. If your epoxy is already dry, your flakes wont stay in place as you roll on the clear coat.

One note on the clear coat - make sure you hire someone GOOD to do that top coat layer. You want a little bit of ripple (for traction) but you don't want the coat so textured that you lose the sheen of the gloss on the coat. It's a fine line. My painter made my poly coat a bit too rough, and it's too ripply for my taste. But what's done is done - only way to fix it now would be to cut the floor down and start over from scratch.

FYI to the OP: I got your PM, and yes, I'm out of the blue UV flakes. But I can direct you to the correct place to get them if you need them.
 
Ill get some pics up this week, I doing my game room floor with Black epoxy and fluorescent flakes. I have the first coat down and will be doing the second tonight with the flakes.
 
Just a note, that pic is NOT MY FLOORS...yet. Just got that off the internets.

Chris Moore did Black epoxy for his gameroom floor with some pacman-theme stencils and here is a link from his website with pics:

http://www.tokensonly.com/2008/10/misc/basement-floor-epoxy-with-a-twist/#more-543

Bill

Yes, Chris' floor is epic!

Can't really think of any "gotchas" with black floors, that's why I asked. I've heard black walls are hard to keep clean, and make the room really hard to light up. I plan on having some kind of non-dark color on the walls eventually, so I'm not worried about the room being too dark. Plus the flakes I'll be throwing down are white, grey and blue. So it won't be completely dark.

Have you already put down the epoxy? If so, you're too late to spread flakes. You need to sprinkle the flakes when the epoxy is setting up, still tacky. If your epoxy is already dry, your flakes wont stay in place as you roll on the clear coat.

One note on the clear coat - make sure you hire someone GOOD to do that top coat layer. You want a little bit of ripple (for traction) but you don't want the coat so textured that you lose the sheen of the gloss on the coat. It's a fine line. My painter made my poly coat a bit too rough, and it's too ripply for my taste. But what's done is done - only way to fix it now would be to cut the floor down and start over from scratch.

FYI to the OP: I got your PM, and yes, I'm out of the blue UV flakes. But I can direct you to the correct place to get them if you need them.

Oh no. My schedule is: today - finish etching, tomorrow - primer, Wednesday - first coat epoxy, Thursday - second coat and flakes, Saturday - clear (time permitting). I just ordered the flakes from originalcolorchips.com with two day shipping.

I'm doing all the labor on this. If setting up the clear is tricky, maybe I'll just put that off for later.

I'm surprised you can't just cut it down to the epoxy if you mess up. If I was hired to apply that stuff for you, I'd rather you be safe than risk you getting hurt on it. Maybe you can polish the finish a bit to take some of the ripple away? (maybe a little Novus 2? :) ).

Is your color chips source different than originalcolorships.com (aka Norkan, Inc.)?
 
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I'm pretty sure my painter got his chips from a supplier similar to that.

I can't cut off my poly top coat because it would damage my flakes.

I'm OK with the floor now, it was just a bit to get used to at first. The room looks very different when you are staring at an empty floor with no games in there. Now that my walls are painted dark blue and the games and pins are moved in it looks very nice.

If you're planning on UV reflective chips, let me try to persuade you to keep your wall color dark. If the room is too bright you'll lose the effect of the black lights. The marquees, monitors, and other lights on the games do a great job of ambient lighting in the room. In fact I've considered adding switches to my marquees to be able to turn them off on some of my games because they are lighting my room TOO much.
 
It was super hard to catch the effect but it looks awesome. Also I was using a hand held black light :)

Without BL :
imagennd.jpg


With BL :
imagevtd.jpg


Floor Level Shot with BL :
imagebdua.jpg
 
Is it still wet in that first pic? Looks like it's got plenty of shine without the sealer.

I'd like to do the sealer, but I'm worried about how slippery it would be. A Behr salesman told me it wouldn't be bad, especially with the flakes, but I don't trust salesmen.
 
Is it still wet in that first pic? Looks like it's got plenty of shine without the sealer.

I'd like to do the sealer, but I'm worried about how slippery it would be. A Behr salesman told me it wouldn't be bad, especially with the flakes, but I don't trust salesmen.

It was almost completely dry, I'm going to still seal sometime this week so I'll post some updated pictures.
 
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