Rust-Oleum RockSolid floor coating in Silver Bullet.

COVID confinement has turned my everyday life upside down. As a car reviewer, I am frequently on the road, off driving some new vehicle in a far-off place. Home projects get pushed to the back burner, or languish half-finished until I have time to attack them in short bursts. Staying home for months has been a challenge, so I decided to turn it into an opportunity. 

About three years ago, my wife and I moved from our small house in Los Angeles to a big old farm house in the suburbs of Detroit. One of the great attractions (for me, anyway), was the presence of a barn/garage on our property. I have had plans to turn the two garage bays in the barn into clean, pleasant spaces to store our cars, motorcycles, and tools. Time has marched on, and the garage dream has remained elusive.

Finally, I had time to undertake the first phase of the project. I allotted a week to clear out one of the garage bays entirely, and to clean, prep, and coat the garage floor. 

My garage project -- before.

When we first bought our house in Los Angeles, one of the first projects I undertook was to coat the garage floor, and I never regretted it. I used a Rust-Oleum garage floor coating kit, and when we sold our house ten years later, the floor coating looked as good as new. The benefit of coating the floor can’t be overstated. Beyond the cosmetic upgrade over bare concrete, epoxy-coated concrete is much easier to clean and to keep clean. Dust doesn’t accumulate the way it does on bare concrete; moisture beads up and doesn’t soak in; spills wipe up easily and oil leaks don’t leave stains. A strong epoxy floor is also resistant to chipping and cracking. I knew any garage project wouldn’t satisfy me if I didn’t take the time to coat the floor first. 

Things change over ten years, so I did some research to find the best solution. I had a few parameters. This would be a DIY project, with me as the “Y,” doing it myself. It had to be simple, safe, fast, and affordable. And I wanted results at least as good as my last garage floor coating project.

I looked at Rust-Oleum’s line of products first. The company has several lines of garage floor coatings designed for homeowner use, from Rust-Oleum Concrete & Garage Floor Paint (a self-priming acrylic paint), to EpoxyShield (a two-part water-based epoxy), to RockSolid (a two-part solvent-based epoxy). 

I investigated other options. 

Garage Flooring LLC of Colorado sells a two-coat Polyurea kit ($780) for 500 square feet of coverage, sufficient for my 358-square-foot bay. I recognized the Garage Flooring logo from car shows, where I had admired their flooring tile systems and garage floor mats, but their prices were a deterrent. 

Another company, ArmorPoxy, makes an epoxy garage floor coating product called “Armorclad.” It comes in a Master Kit with Topcoat with enough material to cover up to 600 square feet for $529.  The Armorclad literature highly recommends using a primer coat before installing the epoxy, which brings the total up to $712 (and adds another step to the application process).

Rust-Oleum RockSolid Garage Floor Coating Kit.

I priced out the Rust-Oleum RockSolid system for my garage. At my local Home Depot, the RockSolid 180-ounce Gray Polycuramine 2.5-Car Garage Floor Kit was $214, and the RockSolid 90 oz. Clear Polycuramine Top Coat Garage Floor Kit (2 Pack) was $298, bringing the total to $512. The RockSolid kits came with the etching formula I would need; plus the foam rollers I’d need to apply the product.

I contacted Rust-Oleum for some expert advice. I spoke with Megan Newton, Rust-Oleum’s Director of Brand Marketing in High-Performance Coatings. My timing was good, as she told me, “I literally yesterday just finished painting my garage with RockSolid.”

I described my project to Newton, and told her that I was considering Rust-Oleum products for my garage. She recommended going with Rust-Oleum RockSolid, as she had for her own project. “We are the market leader when it comes to two-part garage coatings. RockSolid is our highest end. We also have one part water-based coatings again, but you're not going to get the longevity that you get with a two-part epoxy like RockSolid,” she said. “There are a few competitors out there, but doing what we're doing with RockSolid, there's nothing like it in the marketplace.”

I told her I had looked at some competitors, but I wasn’t entirely sure what was different. “Our Polycuramine technology mixes multiple chemistries and resins to form this ultra-hard coating, she said. “It's proprietary to Rust-Oleum. This great hard surface is twenty times stronger than regular two-part epoxy paint — even stronger than our EpoxyShield. It's the best-looking and strongest garage coating you're going to get. Having used it this past week, I got to say that it's amazing how it changes the feel of a garage.”

Newton had more advice. She emphasized the importance of preparation, and suggested that I conduct a moisture test before applying product. “It’s as simple as pie,” she said. “You can just take a nice plastic garbage bag, cut it up and tape a three-by-three-foot area of your garage floor and leave it overnight. In the morning, you pull that up. If there's moisture on the bag, you'll have to do one extra step, which would add to the process.” If I discovered that my floor seeped moisture, I’d have to apply a product like Rust-Oleum Moisture Stop, which penetrates into concrete to form a gel in cracks, pores, and capillaries to keep water from leaching through.

Since I had the positive experience in my last garage, I decided Rust-Oleum RockSolid was for me, and I embarked on my project.

Preparation is the key to a successful garage floor project, and it’s probably the least enjoyable series of tasks. 

Before anything else, I conducted a moisture test, per Newton’s suggestion. Luckily, my garage floor turned out to be bone-dry. One barrier hurdled.

Next, I looked at the weather charts. It was late October in Michigan, which meant any and all weather conditions, from scorching heat to white-out blizzard, could strike. RockSolid needs to be applied when temperatures are between 40 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit in order to bond to the concrete properly. “This product is very weather-dependent,” Newton said. “You definitely want to have a good window of a few days with no rain before and after, and a few days without temperatures dipping below 40 degrees.” I studied the Weather.com app for the proper window, and saw a good week of unseasonably warm days and nights ahead. All systems were go.

An empty garage, ready for the project.

The only part of the project where I engaged help was in clearing out the bay. I engaged a crew of three men for two hours from HireAHelper.com for $298.05 (plus tip), and together we were able to clear out the garage bay to the bare floor. I considered it money well-spent.

The next step of the process was cleaning and degreasing the floor. I swept thoroughly, then wet the floor and applied Rust-Oleum Cleaner and Degreaser for Concrete. I used a push broom to scrub the floor, rinsed again, and then went after tough stains with more degreaser and a long-handled scrub brush. I brought out my pressure washer for another rinse – only to have the hose on the washer burst shortly after starting. A quick search of the Internet revealed my pressure washer to be discontinued, and the repair part unavailable. Rather than allowing this to derail my progress, I doubled down on scrubbing, and got to a satisfactory level of cleanliness. I used a big squeegee to get excess water out of the garage, set up a big fan to blow across the surface, and left the floor to dry for two days. 

The floor has been cleaned and degreased.

Next up was etching. When I did my floor in Los Angeles, I used Muriatic acid to etch the floor, which Rust-Oleum no longer recommends using. Muriatic acid is a very hazardous, harsh chemical, not actually DIY-friendly. Instead, the RockSolid kit includes a bag of citric acid crystals for etching. I emptied the bag into a two-gallon watering can, filled with water, mixed, and poured the solution onto the concrete. Citric acid is still acid, so I worked with Nitrile-coated gloves, safety goggles, and rubber boots, but I didn’t need to be concerned about fumes or runoff into planting beds outside. Again, I scrubbed with the broom and scrub brush. After letting the acid sit for 10 minutes, I rinsed and squeegeed repeatedly until the etching liquid was diluted and gone from the surface. Out came the fan again, and I let things dry for two days. 

Time to coat – wait, no. 

Before I could apply a coating, I had to do some more prep work. My garage floor is 15 or 20 years old, and had developed a few cracks and dings. Now was the time to make repairs, before coating. Some of the cracks were narrow, a few were up to ½-inch wide, and deep into the slab. I got several quart containers of pre-mixed liquid concrete patch and some foam filler cord for the wider cracks. I packed the wider cracks with filler cord, and then filled all of the cracks with the concrete patch mix. Liquid patch filler is self-leveling in ideal circumstances, and should require little or no troweling. I used disposable plastic putty knives sparingly to smooth out any lumps and bumps. I also discovered that I had a few very deep cracks in the slab, cracks that simply swallowed patch filler endlessly, even when packed with foam filler cord. I bought a 50-pound bag of fine sand and poured it into the deepest cracks until they finally filled, then added foam filler cord on top before patching. That solved the problem, and gave me confidence that the cracks would not reappear. I let the patches cure for 24 hours before moving on to the next step.

Garage floor cleaned, etched, and patched.

The temperature had been above 40 degrees overnight, and was expected to rise to 70. In October. In Michigan. Amazing. Perfect weather for epoxy coating and curing. Following the directions, I mixed the first of two pouches of material. First, I put it on the floor and rolled it with the Part A side up toward the Part B side until the internal barrier between the two sides burst. I then picked up the bag, and shifted the bag from side to side for three minutes, mixing the two parts of epoxy. I now had one hour to apply the epoxy to the floor. I cut a corner off the bag, and poured some into the back of the garage bay. I used a new, medium-quality four-inch edging brush to cut in the edges of a 10-foot section (medium-quality, because I knew that I’d be disposing of the brush when I finished this job, rather than attempting to clean it). I then poured more epoxy on the floor, and used the included nine-inch foam roller (mounted on my trusty old roller frame) to spread the material evenly, using W patterns. When I had finished half of the garage and emptied out one bag of epoxy, I paused to spread the decorative paint chips across the wet epoxy. I then mixed the second bag, and repeated the process on the remaining bare floor, following up with a broadcast of paint chips. I planned ahead so I could paint my way out of the room toward the door, avoiding the need to step on wet epoxy. I used all of the epoxy in the 2.5-car garage kit on my 358-cubic-foot bay. If I had had leftover material, the instructions say to let it dry in the package, and discard in normal trash.

The base coat has been applied and has cured for 24 hours.

I allowed the epoxy to cure for two days, though it was safe to walk on in eight hours and to drive on in 24 to 36 hours. I then applied the RockSolid textured top coat, using the same procedure as I had for the base coat. After another 24 hours, my garage floor project was done.

I love how this project turned out. It’s not perfect, through no fault of the product. My perfectionist’s eye can spot an area where the base coat is a little thinly-applied, and another spot where I might have missed applying the top coat. I wish I had broadcast the decorative chips a little more evenly, but my wife disagrees. She likes the random pattern. If and when I do another garage floor, I will recruit a helper with a flashlight to help identify these issues before the floor cures, and hopefully achieve a higher level of finish. In reality, though, it looks great, and even better, functions brilliantly. The total cost of this project, including tools, floor-patching materials, floor-coating kits, and excluding labor (the HireAHelper.com crew) was under $800. A professional installation would have run $3,000 or more. 

The finished project -- ready to be used.

I’ve used Rust-Oleum’s garage floor coating systems twice now. I’ll definitely use RockSolid again – once I can get my other garage bay cleared out.