Maintaining Sealed Epoxy Flooring

The two most general forms of epoxy coated floors are sealed and non-sealed. Most professional companies who install these coatings on your floors will use a professional grade sealant. What this essentially does is add an extra layer between the coating and the environment. To maintain a floor with sealant wiping up spills and stains with a rag or wash cloth usually does the trick. Sometimes a brush may be used to scrub some of the harder materials out, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.

Maintaining Non-Sealed Epoxy Flooring

If you have non-sealed epoxy coating on your floor you can still use the same materials to clean it, but you need to do it immediately. Allowing chemicals to sit on your floor may eventually stain the floor or lead to damage over time. If you need to scrub out chemicals, typical household detergent and water can help.

Sealed epoxy coated floors are very resistant to cracking, the sun’s rays, and chemical such as engine oil. The benefit to a sealed epoxy coated floor is that it simply requires that you wipe up stains. Unsealed floors require you wipe up stains when they occur to prevent staining.

You stand proudly in your garage knowing that the items you see that remain are meant to be here. And you are ready to put in those new garage cabinets that you’ve been dreaming about.

Organize Your Items

Now that you’ve put so much work and planning into what items you are going to store in your garage cabinets, it’s time to plan what types of garage cabinets you need to store those items. So let’s get started!

1. Group your items into like categories – your sporting equipment should all be in one area, while your holiday decorations are in another area. This is to help you more quickly locate the items you have stored in your garage cabinets.

2. Look at the size of the items you are storing. Your new snow skis and those fishing poles will need a tall cabinet, while those holiday reindeer will need a wider, but shorter space.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you store your holiday lights in a shallow box or are there so many that you have several boxes?

Do you keep a toolbox in your garage?

Do you have basic power tools for small household needs?

Do you have a collection of serious power tools for more industrious projects?

Do you need a space to charge batteries for your tools?

And finally, are there other items that you plan to get that you don’t yet have in your garage?

Ok, You’re Ready to Plan the Cabinets!

Here’s where the fun begins. Taking into consideration the sizes and types of items that you are going to store in your garage cabinets, place those items on the floor in the space along the walls where your cabinets will be. You may have a space with items that are tall and will need a narrow, tall cabinet while other items will need a deeper cabinet. Think about the walk space you will also need between your cabinets and your cars.

Tools and lawn equipment vary in size. Small handheld tools may store best in a toolbox – will you want to put that toolbox on a shelf? How many toolboxes do you have? Tools for trimming bushes and saws are unique in size. A shallow wall unit with adjustable hooks and doors for easy access would store and organize those tools. Do you have an area of the garage that isn’t big enough for a larger cabinet? A shallow cabinet could go on that garage wall.

Helpful Tip: Measure the space that you will need to store items, and then double the measurement to give yourself room to expand!

Interested in Garage Cabinets?

www.agsmllc.com
Call Kane Kennedy
480.213.7559

]]> http://www.dreamcoatflooring.com/planning-your-garage-cabinet-system/feed/ 0 http://www.dreamcoatflooring.com/ways-to-organize-your-garage-and-keep-it-organized/ http://www.dreamcoatflooring.com/ways-to-organize-your-garage-and-keep-it-organized/#comments Thu, 23 Feb 2012 18:57:01 +0000 Dreamcoat Flooring http://www.dreamcoatflooring.com/?p=158 Continue reading →]]> Having the time to organize your garage is a luxury we don’t always have, so when you’ve decided to organize your garage, make the most of your time and help keep your garage organized by following some basic organizing tips.

Sorting

The first step to getting and keeping your garage organized is deciding what you want to keep and what you no longer need that is just taking up space. Use the professional organizer’s rule that if you haven’t used it for 3 years you probably aren’t going to use it again. Make space to group together the items that you are going to keep and the items that you are going to discard.

This is also the best time to get rid of the boxes and bags that your things have been in. Plan ahead of your garage organizing day by purchasing clear plastic bins to put items in as you organize. Clear plastic bins are organizational tools that provide sturdy, stackable storage and allow you to see at a glance what is inside. You can also label the bins.

Labeling tip: Placing clear packing tape on the bin before applying your label allows you to more easily pull off the label, in case you decide to remove the label or repurpose that bin in the future. And the clear packing tape can stay on the bin without interfering with being able to see the contents inside the bin.

Zoning

Once you have decided what you are keeping and will store in your organized garage, group together items that are alike. Sports equipment should be together, as should your lawn and garden tools, automotive items, seasonal decorations, and any other items that you plan to store in your garage.

Now decide where in your garage these groups of items should be. This depends mostly on what you store in your garage and how often you need these items. Sports equipment and seasonal items should be easy to reach when it’s time to use them, and out of the way the rest of the year. Items that you use more often should be easier to reach all year round.

Garage Shelves and Cabinets

Storing your items off of the ground and where they can be easily reached when you need them is important to your organizational plan. Shelves are good for this purpose because they separate your boxes into neatly organized spaces so that you can get to the items you need.

Garage cabinets offer advantages to open shelves as you can keep the doors closed leaving you with less visual clutter.

As with most projects, the most important step to getting and keeping your garage organized is having a good plan and being prepared with the right tools. When you are ready to organize your garage – and keep it organized – be ready with a plan and the right solutions for your garage organizing needs.

Therefore, it is all the more necessary to resurface and repair your garage floor once in a few years, to maintain it from depreciating much beyond repair.

Steps to a Beautiful Garage Floor:

1. Our flooring professionals will evaluate your garage floor.

2. Next, we make sure to clean the garage floor from all the muck and the dirt from vehicle tires. Also, any old paint or grit is scraped away that may be sticking to the floor.

3. We will wash the floor thoroughly with soapy water to make sure it is squeaky clean. The garage floor needs to be completely dry before the coating can be applied. It is either air dried or manually squeeze dried or wiped.

4. Once the floor is dry, our flooring professionals make sure to fill in concrete or any holes that may be on the floor. This is done to ensure the floor is leveled and that there are no undulations on the floor. This is necessary to spread the chemical effectively on the floor and for it to stick.

5. Next, the coating is mixed – epoxy or otherwise – for the garage floor. It needs to settle after being mixed and then it can be spread on the floor. We carefully apply the chemical to the garage floor making sure to cover the entire area.

6. Once the entire coating has been put on, the floor is left to dry for twenty four to forty eight hours. Do not put any kind of pressure on the floor and keep it out of bounds till it completely dries up. If you live in a humid area, externals aids like pedestal fans will be used to help dry the floor.

Sure enough professionally resurfacing the garage floor will give a complete new look to your garage.

Both options are a great choice, as they both offer great protection and assure a simpler cleaning process. An epoxy coating is a bit more attractive because it can be created to have a texture such as imitating the appearance of stone. An epoxy coating also offers more complex patterns and color designs than a polyaspartic polyureas coating. Be sure to speak to a professional to help you choose which garage floor coating is the best option for your home.

Thoughts of storage cabinets in your garage may bring on a contented sigh, a smile to your face, and a twinkle to your eye every time you walk into or drive into your garage.

If the thought of having garage storage cabinets in your garage appeals to you this way, then you already know how valuable garage storage cabinets can be in your garage, for your home, and possibly for your organizational sanity!

Stay organized with garage storage cabinets

You know what it’s like to use the space in your garage to store those belongings that don’t fit into the house but don’t go outside either. Like those holiday decorations that are too big to store in the linen closet, or the gardening tools that you need to get to easily when you are outdoors but they are too dirty to store in your kitchen or laundry room. So you store them in your garage alongside your holiday decorations.

If you’ve ever gone without garage storage cabinets, you might know what it’s like to step over items that you’ve stored in your garage just so you can get to your car. And if you stored things on top of one another, you might even know what it’s like to worry that something is going to fall, either on you or your car. Garage storage cabinets are attached to your garage walls so there is never the need to worry about things falling down.

Are you a handyman? Or do you need space in your garage to work on projects? Or perhaps your laundry area is in your garage and you have to step around piles of dirty laundry that are waiting to be washed. You need the space to do your laundry, but there just isn’t a place to work except the garage floor.

Garage storage cabinets can be built to suit your needs

Perhaps you need a wall of cabinets with a cabinet that is tall enough to store your long handled lawn and garden tools. Or perhaps you need a workspace built in to your garage storage cabinets. A countertop with storage cabinets above and below may be just the solution for your handyman projects.

Or perhaps the space you need to organize is around your laundry area. A combination of garage storage cabinets and countertops with a hanging rod for clothes to hang up fresh out of the dryer may be just the solution you need for your laundry area.

Our garages do more than just provide a place for our cars to sleep at night. Garage storage cabinets will help you organize all those items that are taking up space on your garage floor, or are piled in a corner waiting to be used again.

Over the years some garage owners have painted their garage floors. There are a wide variety of paint colors to choose from and you can get very creative by painting patterns or designs on your garage floor. But there are limitations to paint as one of your garage flooring options. The normal wear and tear on your garage floor that comes from driving your car in and out of your garage, dragging the garbage cans in and out from the curb, storing lawn and garden tools in the corners, and the bikes and other sports equipment that we often store in our garages will all add to the wear on the paint. What was once fresh and bright can quickly turn dull and dingy.

Tile
Tile is another one of the garage flooring options available today, and tile can also add a brightness and fresh look to your garage. With the variety of colors to choose from you can create geometric patterns or frame around key spaces within your garage. If you decide to lay tile in your garage you’ll want to be sure that your flooring is level. Tiles are made to be stuck to your garage floor so if your garage floor is not level the tiles will also not be level.

Mats
Mats are another of the many garage flooring options and also have advantages and disadvantages. A full garage mat can be expensive to purchase and install, while a partial mat to cover just part of your garage may offer the garage flooring protection that you need for just that section of your garage and for a lot less money. But perhaps you want more than just a section of your garage floor upgraded?

Epoxy coatings
But by far one of the most admired and durable of your garage flooring options is the epoxy coatings. Epoxy coatings are available today in a wide variety of colors and finishes that match your home and your personal style. Durable and good looking, you can count on epoxy coatings to withstand the test of time. Epoxy coatings install in 2 to 4 days, but you can also choose the polyaspartic polyurea coatings that have the same features as the epoxy coatings but can be installed in less than a day.
Whether you have a single car garage for the family car, a spacious showroom of a garage to show off your car collection, or a garage that fills many needs for your home and family, there are many garage flooring options to suit your needs.

The garage in our home serves many purposes and provides us many benefits. We park our cars in our garage, right alongside the personal items that we store there because they just don’t belong inside our homes.

Protecting our cars and personal belongings is just one of the benefits of having garage cabinets.

Let’s talk a bit about the benefits of garage cabinets. Garage cabinets provide you a place to store your personal belongings in an organized way that allows them to be within easy reach when you need them.

And do you have trouble getting in and out of your car when it is parked inside your garage? Another benefit of these cabinets is that, with your items safely stored away, your car is protected from the chance encounter with some of those belongings falling down or getting pushed underneath your car.

And rather than seeing a jumble of items scattered around your floor and leaning up against your walls, another of the benefits of garage cabinets is that you now have a clean, smooth line of cabinets that offer a calm respite from the clutter that no longer defines your garage.

What kinds of things do you store in your garage? Holiday decorations that only come out for a short time during the year? Do you use your garage to store lawn and yard equipment like your riding lawnmower, weed eater, leaf blower and maybe a ladder or two? Paint cans and cleaning supplies that you need for your car and home?

Perhaps you have sporting equipment such as fishing gear or diving tanks, bicycles, or a stroller in your garage? Without the benefits of garage cabinets, many of the items that we store in our garage are difficult to organize or hard to position and make it look and feel cluttered. Without the benefits of garage cabinets these items are often scattered about so that we can easily get to them but the end result is that all these items wind up taking up a lot of valuable garage floor space.

And of course we can’t forget the most important personal item that we keep stored in our garage – our cars! Without the benefits of garage cabinets it is sometimes very hard to store all these household and personal items in our garage and still be able to get our cars parked in there too. Sometimes there’s just too much stuff stored on the garage floor and our cars wind up outside in the driveway while our garage is full of the things we need to keep on hand.

Once you’ve considered all the benefits of garage cabinets, it’s time to begin planning the design of your garage cabinets so that you can begin to experience all the benefits of garage cabinets for yourself!

Here is a technique you can use to paint the garage floor

You will need:
Floor Cleaner
Plastic Sheeting and Tape
Epoxy Paint Garage Floor Kit
Paint Rollers with Extension Handles
Paintbrush
Paint Tray and Liners

Choose your days for the job
Make sure you choose a day that is dry and the temperature is roughly around 50 -80 degrees Fahrenheit. Higher temperature will cause your efforts to go in waste as the paint will start to peel off. Also make sure you can devote two days at a stretch to paint the floor. The paint takes more than 24 hours to set in and needs work even after that. Now make sure that your garage is dry and is not wet at any cost.

Clean up the garage
The next and the most important step is to clean your garage floor. To apply the paint effectively, make sure the floor is immaculately clean and free from any dust or dirt. If your garage floor has undulations, or cracks and chips, try to fill them up with concrete and level it.

Seal the imperfections so that the garage floor looks leveled. Once this is done hose out your entire garage floor. Remove the existing stains and dirt thoroughly. Use the cleansing solution that comes with the floor paint and use a heavy duty broom to scrub the floors clean. Once that is done apply tape and plastic sheets to the edge of the floor so that the garage paints don’t spread onto the walls.

Apply the Epoxy Paint
Once the floor is ready mix the epoxy paint and hardener. Keep it in shade for about 30 minutes and let the mixture set completely before you can use them. Once it is set start painting the floor and try and complete it in two hours’ time. Use smaller and pointed paint brushes to paint the nook and corners and the egdes to give it a complete and a well finished look. Roll on the paint in the bigger area with rollers to do a fast, yet a perfect paint job.
If you want your garage floor to look a little more colorful, shower it with color flakes. Once that is done let the paint set in without any disturbance. It takes anywhere between 24 – 48 hours.

Top It Off With a Clear Coat
Once the floor is dry, prepare the top coat with hardener. Blend it well and again let it settle for 30 minutes in the shade. Once it is done, spread it on the floor. Should you want an anti-skid surface, add the particles to them before spreading it out on the floor. The procedure is same as the paint application. Finish of the job in two hours and wait till it becomes totally dry.

Epoxy paint is easy to apply and makes your garage look clean and shiny. In case you are not sure of the procedure, you can call us at (480) 226-4172.

The next step is to clean your garage, as you may have many boxes full of junk scattered about in the large room. During the process of consolidating your stored possessions, you may have noticed that the floor in your garage looks grungy and extremely unattractive because of all the oil stains and dirt that has collected over the years. So you begin the painstaking process of scrubbing the garage floor with chemicals that send your allergies into overdrive, burn your eyes, and make it a bit difficult to breathe without a hacking cough. Once the process is complete you are quick to decide that you never want to work that hard to clean your garage floor again, it is time to have your garage floor coated with epoxy.

You begin to search around for a local business that can do the epoxy job for you while offering a large selection of colors to choose from. Perhaps you would like to keep the ground a traditional color such as cement gray, or perhaps an adobe brick color would perfectly compliment the color of your garage cabinets. Since all of the basic colors look so good, you know that you need to keep your selection neutral.

As you look further into the color selections, you begin to realize that flat colors are only the beginning. Blended color chips are quickly introduced, ranging in colors anywhere from a deep earth blend, a green warm tropic, to a blue cool ice. Metallic colors become an option, with colors such as: cappuccino, sterling, pearl, caribbean blue, or even a merlot. Perhaps you would like for your garage floor to appear rugged and look into an acid stain color. Acid stain colors include: green, buckskin, blue, cola, walnut, and a reddish-brown color by the name of uber. The final style is a quartz style ranging in colors anywhere from blacks, to reds.

As you may have noticed, there are so many choices and you may want to put some serious thought into choosing the right color. Contact Dream Coat Flooring to receive a consultation with a sales representative, who can certainly help you choose the right color for your garage floor.