Garage Arcade Flooring

MagicMarc-er

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Aside from carpet, has anyone tried any of the concrete surface coating products out there? How do they hold up to heavy cabinets sliding on them? Would it be best to put down a thin strip of sacrificial carpet under the cabinets to keep it from scratching?

Advice? Pics?
 
Aside from carpet, has anyone tried any of the concrete surface coating products out there? How do they hold up to heavy cabinets sliding on them? Would it be best to put down a thin strip of sacrificial carpet under the cabinets to keep it from scratching?

Advice? Pics?

I had my garage floor professionally epoxy coated. If you're not careful, the metal leg levelers will scratch through the clear coat and will be obvious if you're not careful. I have a couple spots that I'm going to try and buff out at some point already.

FWIW, I ordered nylon leg levelers for all of my games to help them slide easier and not fuck my floor up.
 
May I ask what it cost you ? The previous owner used one of those do it
yourself kits and it's all peeling up and turning to dust, especially the areas
that the hot tires run over.

I'd like to get mine redone properly.

John

I had my garage floor professionally epoxy coated. If you're not careful, the metal leg levelers will scratch through the clear coat and will be obvious if you're not careful. I have a couple spots that I'm going to try and buff out at some point already.

FWIW, I ordered nylon leg levelers for all of my games to help them slide easier and not fuck my floor up.
 
As with my basement before and after we put the flooring in I recommend the nylon leg levelers or furniture sliders for sliding games around.
 
At my old house I did the real-deal Epoxy flooring. Pretty expensive. I think that I spent about $700 for the entire 3-car garage. The kind where you mix 2 formulas together creating a chemical reaction. So much so that the concoction actually heats up. Anyway, the results were (at first) amazing. Glossy surface. Like a candy shell on my floor. It was very easy to sweep clean and even easier to hose out and squeegee.



However, the honeymoon quickly wore off. (pun intended) After about a year, the hot tires from my car started pulling the epoxy off in sheets. And all the dust and small rocks just scratched the crap out of the entire surface. I realized that I was turning into a crazy man because I way baby-ing the exact material that was supposed to hold up to all of this abuse. This stuff was supposed to hold up to airplanes parking on it while in a hangar. pfft...yea right. Sliding anything on this flooring with scratch it. Period. Just looking at epoxy coating will scratch it.

TL;DR - Don't waste your time or money on any epoxy/painted flooring material. They will not hold up. Biggest single wast of money I have ever made. So glad I don't have to deal with that garage floor any longer in my new house. Don't do it!
 
At my old house I did the real-deal Epoxy flooring. Pretty expensive. I think that I spent about $700 for the entire 3-car garage. The kind where you mix 2 formulas together creating a chemical reaction. So much so that the concoction actually heats up. Anyway, the results were (at first) amazing. Glossy surface. Like a candy shell on my floor. It was very easy to sweep clean and even easier to hose out and squeegee.



However, the honeymoon quickly wore off. (pun intended) After about a year, the hot tires from my car started pulling the epoxy off in sheets. And all the dust and small rocks just scratched the crap out of the entire surface. I realized that I was turning into a crazy man because I way baby-ing the exact material that was supposed to hold up to all of this abuse. This stuff was supposed to hold up to airplanes parking on it while in a hangar. pfft...yea right. Sliding anything on this flooring with scratch it. Period. Just looking at epoxy coating will scratch it.

TL;DR - Don't waste your time or money on any epoxy/painted flooring material. They will not hold up. Biggest single wast of money I have ever made. So glad I don't have to deal with that garage floor any longer in my new house. Don't do it!

I've heard that when stuff like that happened to these types of floors, it has to do with prep work. I think that the epoxy works best on brand new concrete. My father-in-law had his professionally done when he built his new house and the floor is still in amazing shape. It's still slick as shit and looks spotless.

I went with stained concrete (water-based) on my concrete floor: https://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=205661 It turned out pretty nice and has held up fairly well:

attachment.php


You do need to wax it every so often, which is a huge pain. If I had to do it again, I think I would have it professionally stained. YMMV.
 
I've heard that when stuff like that happened to these types of floors, it has to do with prep work. I think that the epoxy works best on brand new concrete.

Didn't make any difference to my situation. My house was brand new built from the ground up so my concrete was brand new. I followed the directions exactly as they were described. I even did the pre-wash acid bath with a scrubbing brush. I could not of had a more ideal situation for successful bond.

The stuff is total garbage.
 
I've got the epoxy coating on concrete in my basement game room. My only mistake was trying to move games in too early (48hrs) and scratched it up in a few places. I'd wait 4 days if I did it again.

However the guy that did it brought me some additional epoxy and the spots touched up nicely. I really like how it turned out and am considering doing the rest of the basement that way.

I've added felt sliders to the bottoms of all my levelers.

I think I paid about a buck a sq foot, but that was a friend of a friend cash deal.
 
Didn't make any difference to my situation. My house was brand new built from the ground up so my concrete was brand new. I followed the directions exactly as they were described. I even did the pre-wash acid bath with a scrubbing brush. I could not of had a more ideal situation for successful bond.

The stuff is total garbage.

Ugh. That blows. The money wouldn't necessarily bother me as much, but the time spent doing it all for not, would piss me the fuck off.
 
Mine cost $2850 for about a 600 sq ft three car garage. That included literally everything from start to finish.

I tried to do the floor myself first, with commercial grade epoxy products that the guy I used actually uses. I refuse to use the Rustoleum kits and such from Home Depot et all for this kind of application and I just know it wouldn't hold up over time.

Anyway, tried to do it myself and acid etched my garage floor which went ok for the most part. Caulked all the cracks and seams, then started applying the primer coat. Problem was that I mixed the primer coat together (two different cans of stuff, the epoxy itself and then the color component or what have you) too fast and it cooked off on me and started reacting before I could get it all on the floor. I have pictures of my trials and tribulations, but this stuff started rising up in the bucket like bread rising, and the stuff got super tacky and turned into ridges on the floor.

Anyway, there was no turning back and the floor was fucked up with no fixing the mess I made AT ALL. I called the guy who I should have called originally, who came out and peeled up everything I laid down, diamond grinded the floor, filled holes and dug new channels which were refilled, then laid everything down. The whole thing was done in about 2 days, walking on it on day 3.

I wasted about $300 in materials due to my ineptitude and wish I would have called him sooner. The process truly is an art form and I couldn't be happier with how it looks (minus the cost of course). You truly get what you pay for.

As far as the scratches go, I have some ideas to fix them, such as cleaning them with acetone and then maybe trying to buff/re-clearcoat the scratch marks. But I think with the new nylon leg levelers I won't fuck up my floor anymore.
 
The ashes are a nice substitute for the speckles that come
with a lot of the epoxy kits.


My garage floor has a hardened covering of spilled drinks, bodily fluids and cigarette ashes. It's holding up surprisingly well...
 
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