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You wanted to be sure your concrete garage floor would have protection, so you put down epoxy garage floor paint. It’s looking great, and just looking at it makes you happy. You never thought garage flooring would make such a difference. Then, something horrible happens (queue the horror movie shrieking). Your epoxy garage floor coating takes a hit! Luckily for you, it’s not all that hard to fix a crack or chip when it comes to epoxy garage floors.

Preparing An Epoxy Garage Floor Coating To Be Repaired

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.

Fixing The Problem While Being Sure Not To Die

Now that you have an area that is mostly bare, you can repair the epoxy garage floor coating. Use the directions that are included with your epoxy kit, as well as some common sense regarding the fact that you’re working with a small area. Make sure that you also hit the edges where the affected area touches the old paint, bleeding over at least a little bit, to blend the new and old colors. Most importantly, make sure that your garage is ventilated any time that you are using an epoxy garage floor coating. Human lungs don’t care for epoxy fumes.

Keeping It From Happening Again

Next time you’re working in your garage, use a garage floor mat! Anything that happens once is likely to happen again. Any garage floor covering will prevent this from happening, and small mats for where you are working aren’t very expensive. The next time you drop a tool, you’ll be very glad that you got some extra protection. Epoxy garage floor coatings look great, and are very durable, but they are definitely not indestructible.

Check out Sweet Garage Floor for more information to help you choose or repair yourgarage floor coating.