My garage is my workshop – like most DIYers – which means it is a disaster zone (probably also like most DIYers). At first it drove Hubby up the wall every time there was a paint drip on the floor – but I broke him.
I had to spill and spray everywhere in order to do it, but eventually he gave up and resigned himself to a ‘dirty garage’. (Funny, making a mess in the house doesn’t seem to bother him, but heaven forbid the garage be unsightly)
I’ve been thinking about re-doing the garage floor for a couple of summers now, thinking about putting in garage floor mats (from somewhere similar to https://www.armorgarage.com/garage-floor-mats.html), and even approached a paint company to see if they’d be interested in a product review, but then I’d have to be neat and tidy in my workshop and where’s the fun in that?
A friend of mine got an epoxy coating for his garage floor which looked absolutely amazing. It made me question my choice but I’m still happy with the results. It also seemed to get me started on a rather unhealthy garage floor epoxy coating obsession that had me looking into everything that I could possibly know about it, and in the end, somewhere along the line, it gave me the idea for my next DIY project.
This year I decided I wanted a painted garage floor but I’m not motivated enough to to take on the entire garage, particularly since it will just get messy again. Painting a rug on the concrete seemed like a fun “to try” idea.
I started my painted garage floor by washing the concrete with an acid cleaner.
Don’t worry, I chose an “Environmentally friendly” cleanser and scrubbed down the floor with a push broom and a pressure washer.
I’ll admit, at this point I was pretty disappointed – if you look at the before picture and the one above, you’ll notice that the paint is even brighter and stands out more. That’s because the acid wash cleaned the dirt, grease, rust and dust out of the concrete and just left the really dried-on paint behind. A clean mess.
Once the floor was completely dry, I set about trying to figure out how to make a diamond-pattern painted rug.
I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like such an idiot as I did trying to figure out this floor pattern. You see a 12×12″ square, turned on an angle, gives you 17″ from corner to corner.
What?!
I chalked out a 4′ by 7′ rectangle and then tried to tape out my diamonds.
But then you have to take into account that the tape needs to be on the outside of each painted square.
But then you can’t paint every other square either?
WTF?
I ended up taking four 12×12″ scrapbook pages and laid each out and taped around every other one- which put me beyond my 4′ by 7′ rectangle (if I wanted a balanced layout on my painted garage floor rug)
Jeeesh!
I used a concrete stain from Benjamin Moore in two shades of grey.
Now if you look at the above photo, you’ll see that this isn’t enough ‘light’ squares to complete the pattern. I needed more light squares in between the first ones.
I let the first ones dry, then taped off the second set of the light.
This was supposed to be fun right?
I decided to save on the painter’s tape (mainly because I’d run out at this point) and just hand-paint the darker squares.
I did use a bit of duct tape (the only thing left in my garage) for an outside border on my painted rug and voila!
Now, if you’re like my neighbour that showed up as I was halfway through hand-painting the dark diamonds, you might ask “But Shelly, why didn’t you just paint a giant light coloured rug and then just tape off the dark squares?”
$#@%!!! (Profanitype)
Yes, if I hadn’t eaten an idiot sandwich before starting my painted garage floor, I might have thought of that.
Actually, nope – learned the hard way is my style.
Look at how beautiful my workshop is!
Anther neighbour came by and said “Now you just need to do the rest of the garage”
(I know, you’re thinking “F-ing neighbours”)
I had to explain to him the difference between ‘wanting’ to do something and ‘having’ to do something. ‘Wanting’ to try a painted rug was fun, ‘having’ to sweat my butt off doing the rest of the garage is not.
The theory of life according to Shelly.
Besides, my side of the garage looks great – it’s Hubby’s side that is messy. Lol
Update: February 2018 the painted garage floor has held up perfectly. No peeling or chipping of the stain despite having been washed several times. I highly recommend!
Have a great one!
