Staining Your Garage Floor DIY... Don't Do It!

Hubby and I thought that having stained concrete floors in the garage would look really cool! 
It might hide some of the imperfections in the floor, cover some of the stains, etc.

So, we got the cleaner/etcher and I spent a Saturday cleaning one bay of the garage.  
I even used it as one of my photo of the day pics.  I was all gungho to see how this was going
to work!
Floor is cleaned and I am ready to start! I poured the stain into an old pump sprayer, and just
went for it....  Of course, I was sooo frustrated, I forgot to take pics.  Ugh!



























It pretty much just poured out of the sprayer and made a huge mess! The first arrow on the
left is where I started, the fridge will sit there.  I panicked and just got a paint brush and 
brushed the whole area. Then I tried "going in a circular motion" like the instructions said. 
That's where I got all of the curly Q's.  Nice, right??

So, jumped in the van and went to town for a new sprayer.  That's probably what my problem
is.  It's not spraying it fine enough.  So, I tried the new sprayer. Well, that seemed a little 
better.... I finished spraying the rest of the garage bay.  I even went back over it with a second
coat.  Not really the look we were going for....

When hubby came home, I showed him the floor.  He could tell I was not a happy camper.... 
So, we thought why don't we try adding a second color, maybe that will give it more of the
mottled look we wanted.  Hmmm, it was definitely worth a try!





















Hmmm... We did a dark brown color over it.... See the nice overlap marks?























All I can see is U. G. L. Y.  Really, really ugly!!  The mustardy brown poopy color was NOT 
working! It just looks bad! So, what did we do?  We took back the dark brown stain, and 
bought 1-part epoxy garage floor paint, in a plain 'ole concrete gray color.





















OMG! This looks soooo much better!  Immediately, I started to calm down.  I can definitely 
live with this!  It just looks so clean!





















You can see our dirty foot prints, it's all just dust from sanding and sawing.  The floor was
completely dry. And... you can see that I kinda need to finish.  

The plan is to run a piece of painters tape down the left side and finish it off with a nice neat
line. We read all kinds of bad reviews on painting garage floors. A lot of them complained
about hot tire pick up, but we shall see.  Pretty sure hubby plans on putting a rug down 
where the car will be parked.  

Who knows how it will hold up, but I could NOT look at that mustard/brown poopy colored 
floor any longer! This is soooo much better!! We still aren't sure if we are going to finish the
rest of the garage.  The plan is to see how it holds up.  If using a rug for the car works, 
we'll probably paint the rest.

So, there you have it!  I wouldn't recommend DIY staining your concrete floors.... If you want 
it really bad hire a pro. I guess we didn't want it bad enough.... nah, we're just too cheap! :)
Seriously... it's just a garage...

Blessings,
 photo New Lori 100_zps2lw4mgnc.jpg

1 comment

  1. You have a good attitude...it's just a garage! It IS so frustrating when a plan does NOT work out. I'm with you...the gray looks clean and neat. Are there rugs made for cars/garages or are y'all just going to put one there? Thanks for the heads up on the stain...it might help one of us not have to go through the experience that you had.

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