Just recently, I was out with one of our Harrisburg based coatings crews. We had multiple garage floor coatings to complete in the same neighborhood. The two homes were directly across the street from one another, making it easy to finish the first garage floor's epoxy & polyaspartic, decorative chip systems and then start the second garage. I was there when they were completing the 2nd garage’s epoxy coatings.
Of the two jobs, the larger garage had one of our newer chip blends and I was admiring it while speaking with the homeowner. This job had been completed the day prior. I saw he was doing some painting of the concrete stem walls that surrounded the garage. Their stem walls were not only taller than normal (typical stem walls are only a few inches tall), but were also heavily textured. As such, they would not have looked good coated with the same system as the garage floor coating.
The homeowner explained that after we had removed the original, failing garage floor paint kit (plus the underlying concrete floor sealer) and replaced it with our professional garage floor coatings, the bare concrete walls looked ugly and awkward. He had purchased paint that closely matched the underlying epoxy in the new floor coatings (see: Matching Your Exterior Home Colors & Garage Floor Coatings).
When should you paint once the garage floor coatings are installed?
The homeowner went on to explain that during his prior meetings with our salesperson (Steve), he had inquired about when was best to do any painting in the garage. Steve had explained that wall and ceiling painting could be done either before or after the garage floor coatings installation with the following caveats:
- If painting before the arrival of our coatings crews, all painting should be completed a minimum of 72 hours prior to our arrival to allow the paint to completely dry. This alleviates potential tackiness in the fresh paint that may make the decorative chips want to stick to the newly painted surface or absorb the odors from the coatings (which is very minor with our high solids, clear polyurea top coats).
- If painting after the completion of the garage floor coatings, it’s best to wait a day or two to allow the full chemical resistance of a coating to be achieved. Then, if paint is spilled or dripped on the flooring system, it is easy to remove (either by picking it off, scrubbing it off, or using paint thinner).
I had arrived as he was completing the painting of the stem walls. He had about 75% of it complete. The painted stem walls really complemented the coatings.
Easy to clean coatings make paint removal a snap!
While the homeowner had used a drop clothe while painting, he still had a few minor drips that had dried. I showed him how easily they came right off. In the past, we’ve had many homeowners call with questions about dried on paints, road tar, and rust stains. In these articles, we detail how to handle these situations:
- Removing Road Tar from our Garage Floor Epoxy Coatings
- Our Epoxy Garage Floor Versus Dried On Paint
- 12 Tips for Use & Care of Your Epoxy Floor Coatings
I had also wrote a 2014 blog post called Garage Floor Clean-Up: Confessions of a Lazy Homeowner that is about my own personal laziness when it comes to maintaining my own garage floor coatings (completed back in 2004). Haven't already scheduled a floor coatings installation with us? Request a free quote today!
Mike Mincemoyer is the President of STRONGHOLD FLOORS. His team has completed over 7,500 garage floor coatings since 2004.