LESLIE: John in North Carolina needs some help with a garage floor. Tell us what’s going on.
JOHN: My house is approximately seven years old and for the last two years, I’m getting a lot of powder coming up on the floor. I can sweep this garage out every other day and it’s like a dust storm. And parts of the garage floor, now it looks like 80-grit sandpaper.
TOM: So the surface of the concrete is wearing away, it sounds like.
JOHN: Yeah.
TOM: So, you know a good solution for that is to use a concrete-resurfacing product on it.
JOHN: OK.
TOM: Made by a number of manufacturers. QUIKRETE, I know, has one that’s very good and it’s specifically designed to stick to the old concrete surface. So with that, you would probably clean it up – follow the label directions but you would clean up the dust and then apply the resurfacer to the whole surface. And then once that dries, that should lock in that deterioration and stop it from happening further.
And then beyond that, you could go ahead and paint the garage floor, maybe with an epoxy paint. There are two-part epoxy paints that have a hardener mixed in with a color coat. And then they have a chip, like a color chip, that you can throw in that gives the floor some density and some depth to it.
JOHN: I have a couple hot tire marks. Could I power-wash those off?
TOM: Well, you want to be careful with the power washing. I mean if you’re going to use the resurfacer, as long as the surface is reasonably clean, I think you’d probably be able to go right on top of those. If you power-wash, you’re essentially going to inject that old concrete driveway with a lot of water and that’s going to take a long time to dry out. So I would rather the slab stay as dry as it can be and you not just blast it with a whole bunch of water right before you resurface it.
JOHN: I appreciate it very much. I’ve been dealing with this now for three years. It’s been driving me buggy.
TOM: Let’s take care of it this weekend, shall we, John?
JOHN: It’s on top of my list.
TOM: Alright. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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