How To Paint Concrete Floors

What's going on guys, I'm the Calgary Painter, and today I'm going to show you guys how to paint a concrete floor. In particular today, we're painting a garage floor, so we're going to transform it from this, into this. Let's do this. All right guys, for the first thing we need to do is clean this floor here up. Now what we're going to do is take a scraper and we're going to remove any high spots. 

Let's see, here we've got some adhesive, and also some joint compound. Go around and scrape all those high spots off. If you've got any low spots, you can fill those in later. We're going to quickly sweep all of this out and off the garage floor, and then we're going to vacuum it all up. So just quickly straight down your high spots. You can see here we've got some paint. Make sure everything's nice and flush.

All right, now that we've got the floors reasonably clean, we need to also wash these floors down. Now,  before I wash these floors down, what I'm also going to do is, I'm going to be etching this concrete. The reason why we etch the concrete is to make it a bit more rough, almost at about 180 grit sandpaper, that's the kind of feel we're going to get. 

That's going to allow our paint to adhere a lot better to the concrete surface. So if you have a look here at this existing concrete floor before we paint it, it's very, very smooth in this garage. And that's the reason we etch the concrete floor first. Now, usually you can use hydrochloric acid, also known as muriatic acid, however if you have use that in the past, I'm sure you'll know the smell is absolutely horrible. 

It's a very, very strong chemical. And what I opt to use is something that's a little bit more environmentally friendly. Which is this one right here. White nights ultra paved concrete HR. So this one here is a lot safer to use, and what we're going to be doing is, basically using this to etch our concrete. So we want to have a nice rough concrete floor surface here to make sure everything adheres properly. 

This is very easy to use. One kilo here, which is the whole container, will do 10 liters of water. So what we're going to be doing is, making 10 liters of etching compound using this whole section here. So what we need is a bucket. We've got 10 liters of water in there. And what we're going to do is basically pour the granules straight into the bucket. Just some clean water in there. And we're going to mix it around with a little stirring stick or anything that you've got laying around. 

So that's the reason why I've got this little stick here. So we'll mix that initially in the bucket. Make sure that granules completely dissolve. Then we'll switch it over to our watering can. Just apply it evenly around on the concrete. And you'll instantly see that start to foam and bubble up. At that point we're going to take our broom, and we're going to start to scrub this concrete floor. 

Make sure the etching compound gets all into that concrete. And just let it sit there for probably about a minute and a half to two minutes, until the bubbling stops. Basically at that point, we're going to take a garden hose, and we're just going to wash all this itching compound straight out of this concrete area. So let's get straight into it guys. And we'll get started on our etching process. 

So we'll take our etching compound. You can see it's just looks like white sand inside. We're just going to apply that to the 10 liters of water. And then we're going to stir that until it completely dissolves. It shouldn't take too long. Now I can fill you those granules basically already so now this is completely dissolved. We can transfer the water from the bucket into our watering can. 

So I'll show you guys quickly. A little test area before I go through, and do the whole area here. So we just want to spray that on. We take our brush, and then we can work that sort of concrete. So the concrete had about 24 to 48 hours worth of dry time. You need to make sure that your concrete is nice and dry, there's no moisture left inside it before you start painting. 

So an easy way to check for moisture is by doing a moisture test. So let me do a moisture test is by taking a piece of plastic, as I've got here, put some tape on it, and we're going to take that down to the concrete floor. Now, what that does is, we'll let this one sit for a bit, come back, and check it, and we'll make sure that there's no moisture being built up on that. 

Take the time and double check. If there is any moisture in the concrete, it's going to try and escape over the next couple of hours, and you'll see a bit of beading, or a bit of water moisture on top of that plastic, or underneath the plastic. So we can come back after a few hours, peel off the tape, and check for any moisture underneath the plastic. 

If it's nice and dry, then we're ready to start painting. If you find there's a little bit of moisture being built up on the plastic, give it a couple more hours of dry time, and repeat the test. So now we're finally ready to start painting. What we're going to be using is white nights ultra paved. There's a lot of different concrete paints out there. 

The vast majority of them are actually pretty good, because it designed for, and design to be durable.  Most of them do an exceptional job. This one here the reason why I've chosen it is number one. It's a lot cheaper. Number two, this one here in particular is a water-based product, so that means the dry time is going to be a lot shorter. About 2 hours in between coats. 

And this one here is also suitable for garage floors. Now, if you did want to drive onto this garage floor, which we won't be, in this case, and put a separate primary coat on the floor before applying this product. If you don't plan on having any kind of car going onto the concrete.  The purpose or priming paint so it's got a primer built in to the paint. 

Ready to go. We don't have to put a separate primer on unless you plan on driving on it, so this one here, like I said, was based design for concrete and pavers and it's tint able, so perfect. I've already tinted my color. We've got here this one in storm gray, smoke storm sorry, so this one has been tinted in smoke storm. 

We're going to start off as we would with any other painting project cut around the edges with a brush and then we're going to roll everything in. So the first coat is now complete. We'll give it another hour or two. Let it dry off. The first coat looking pretty good so far, however, the second coat should give us a lot better coverage and make it stand out a lot better. 

This is the finished product guys so I really nice results super fast 2 hour dry time in between coat the actual product itself cost about $80 so it's an awesome little finish to help rejuvenate your garage or concrete floor hopefully you guys have enjoyed reading this how to paint concrete floors blog post You could likely get better results calling in a professional concrete painter to paint out your concrete floors.

The professional painters and decorators over at 1/2 Price Pro Calgary Painting can probably help you with that. For over 15 plus years to date, our low cost and professional Calgary Painters have been helping customers and clients paint concrete floors just like yours. We can probably save you a lot of time and a lot of money on painting your concrete floor. Give us a call @ (587) 800-2801 to schedule a free painting estimate, or a free painting price quote.