Selling a house today requires every possible advantage. Remodeling the garage is an inexpensive way to gain an advantage. When a prospective buyer opens the garage door and sees a nice floor, cabinet and wall organization shelving, he gets excited. The house has credibility and gives the prospective buyer confidence that the house is sound.

Start with a high performance coating

There are many options available. You may have seen kits available at home improvement stores. Don’t be fooled by the pretty box label with a nice yellow or red sports car. Cheap epoxy paint does not have the ability to work on most concrete floors. The moisture found in each piece of concrete continuously emits a vapor and pushes the salts to the surface. This is what causes chipping and desmanification. It is caused by capillary pressure or in extreme cases hydrostatic pressure.

Cheap coatings are very thin and every stain bleeds. A high performance epoxy is a thick layer of about 11 to 15 mils. Thin, inexpensive floor paints may be as low as 4-5 mils when wet and less when dry. Ask for the thickness in mil before buying.

Surface preparation is critical to long-term performance

80% of all floor covering failures are due to improper surface preparation. Be sure to use a high quality crack filler or repair product. Cutting corners on quality spells trouble later on. If your patch or crack delaminates, so will your siding. Again, just because the product says crack filler on the label doesn’t mean it works.

Be sure to etch the concrete surface first. Professional applicators use a shot blaster, which is a machine that is pushed behind and shoots small ball bearings to the surface. This wears down the concrete making the surface feel and look like coarse sandpaper. This process increases the surface area to which the epoxy adheres.

Just as effective is etching concrete with an acid. There are two types, gel and liquid acid. Liquid acids are often very weak, inconsistent, and overly saturate the concrete with water. Again, moisture is the enemy of any coating. You can get the same result by etching your concrete with an acid gel. Gel acids have been a breakthrough for the DIY epoxy market. They are safe and easy to apply just roll on and they work. The results are like a shot blast.

Resistance to hot tires and chemicals

You have probably seen painted garage floors that are peeling off the ground where the tires travel. Sometimes you will even see a path that follows extreme fault tires where the tires stop. Tires heat up from friction with the road. This extreme heat will cause all but high performance epoxies to break down. When epoxies are mixed, the chemicals intertwine like a chain that gives them strength. Inexpensive products do not have the ability to withstand the extreme heat of tires. Its crosslinking is weak.

Decorative token systems

Concrete floors are never flat. They have ups and downs that are the result of human imperfection and how concrete cures. When you apply decorative chips in epoxy, you take the look out of imperfections and add a decorative result. You can apply a light chip broadcast that scatters the chips slightly or a full chip broadcast that provides complete coverage. Only a thick, high performance epoxy will allow you to apply a full application.

Cabinets and Shelves

Once your floor is complete, you can think about adding cabinets and shelving. The complete flooring and cabinetry package really creates the wow factor if you’re looking to add value to a home. The garage remodeling market is huge, but not everyone has made the investment. If you are a seller looking for a solution to make your property stand out, an investment of a few thousand dollars in your garage will make all the difference.