Pointers For Repairing A Cracked Epoxy Garage Floor Coating

Most people apply epoxy garage floor paint because they want to be sure that their concrete garage floor will be protected. It looks really nice, and makes you happy to be in your garage. I bet you never thought garage flooring could brighten your day so much! But then, it happens. A tool falls (insert slow motion footage), slams into the epoxy garage floor coating, leaving a dent and sending a chip of epoxy flying. Thankfully, repairing cracks and chips on epoxy garage floors isn't very difficult.

Preparing Your Epoxy Garage Floor Coating For Repair

The first thing you need to do is clean the area that needs to be prepared. You'll want to get rid of dirt, but there will also likely be some sort of grease or oil, even if you don't work on your car in your garage. Cars are funny like that, even brand new ones. If nothing else, tires track some pretty nasty stuff on to your garage floor coating. Luckily, since epoxy paint is designed to resist damage from chemicals, it's also pretty good at taking a thorough cleaning. Although there are cleaners that are specifically designed for epoxy, dish soap works just as well, and is much easier on your hands. Don't just clean the damage, either. Be sure to clean a wide area around the damaged spot as well.

Removing The Offending Section

Unfortunately you can't just fill the affected spot, or it would stick out like a sore thumb. Epoxy, as with pretty much any paint, will kind of fade and change color as time passes, although it's generally not noticeable unless you add new paint with which to compare. When repairing a ding on a car, this can be addressed using a clay bar or a scratch removal compound to mix the old and new paint together. Epoxy is made to resist that kind of tampering, though. So, to make sure the new blends with the old, you will need to remove a square of paint surrounding the area that is affected, to make the newly painted area big enough so as to not be obvious. A hobby knife or box cutter is very useful for this. Try to cut about two inches on every side of the scar, bigger if you are fixing an area that is very obvious, such as the middle of the garage floor. After the cut has been made, take a blow dryer and heat the area that is to be removed until the epoxy begins to soften, then use a paint scraper to remove the paint.

Avoiding Having To Do This Again

Buy a garage floor mat! If it happened once, it will happen again. To prevent that, buy some sort of garage floor covering, at least for using whenever your garage floor might take a hit. After everything is said and done, you'll be very glad you did. Epoxy garage floor coatings are very nice to look at, and certainly durable, but they're not indestructible.