DIY Garage Floor Paint: Rust-Oleum Rock Solid
How we used Rustoleum garage floor paint to create a beautiful garage floor coating without hiring anyone!
Before we get into how to paint your garage floor I'd like to start off with a little back story, cause I know you'll be able to relate. (And if you can't, well, I want to be like you someday.)
This post contains affiliate links for your convenience. Read the full disclosure.
Leading up to this garage makeover
When we first bought our home I had big dreams.
It was going to be wonderful, and organized, and have a beautiful garage where we would do all of our home projects so efficiently. You know, a garage with a beautiful coating on the floor, amazing organization, and a place for everything.
So we put a lot of time into finding the right home, and planning out how we would make it beautiful and functional.
We found "the one", then found out I was pregnant, and then, because it was a short sale we didn't actually take ownership until the day after my daughter was born.
And even though we gave ourselves 3 weeks to do flooring and paint before moving in, the dream of adding the garage floor coating before all of our stuff arrived got left behind.
We were busy enough with just getting the inside ready to move in, not to mention taking care of a brand new baby.
So our stuff arrived, years went by, we accumulated more stuff, and the garage slowly became a dumping ground. How were we ever going to do the floor now?
Well, you all know I'm a huge fan of pretty much anything Rust-Oleum so when they reached out and asked me to use their floor paint and try their DIY garage floor coating kit, Rock Solid ®, we pretty much rearranged our entire month and made it happen!
Before our Garage Makeover
This isn't the first time I've dared to show you just how embarrassing some of the areas in my home are. Look at all of that crap!
At some point we tried to get organized and got as far as getting some overhead storage and peg board up, but clearly it wasn't enough.
In order to get the garage floor painted, we had to clear EVERYTHING out, so we had a storage container delivered and out everything went.
With everything in the storage container in our driveway we finally had the clean slate we needed to paint the garage floor!
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How To Apply Garage Floor Paint
What do you need to paint your garage floor?
- Concrete and garage floor paint: Rust-Oleum Rock Solid Kit
- Large bucket
- Broom
- Vacuum
- Squeegee with long handle
- Deck scrub brush
- Roller holder attached to long handle
Here's a video to give you an overview of the process, the details with photos are below!
Preparing the garage floor for paint
The first step is to clean the concrete floor really well before using the epoxy kit.
We started by sweeping and vacuuming to remove all of the dust and dirt.
Then we scrubbed the floor with water and a little bit of dish soap to remove anything else.
Remember we had never parked a car in here so there were no actual oil stains; if your floor has them, you'll probably want to use something a bit stronger to lift out the stains so the coating sticks to your floor properly.
Once the scrubbing was complete, we rinsed the floor with the hose and used a squeegee to remove the excess water. You don't want any puddles of water.
The Rustoleum floor kit comes with an etching solution that you mix with water and pour on to open up the pores in your concrete.
We poured the etching solution onto the entire floor, starting at the back wall and working our way out.
You will want to wear a mask and shoes for this part. The etching solution should not touch your skin.
We left it on for about 20 minutes and then rinsed with the hose and squeegeed out the excess water.
Once the concrete floor is etched and dry it will be a lot lighter and almost look powdery, but it shouldn't actually be powdery. If it is, you will need to rinse again.
Now for the fun part! We prepared the area with some paper and painter's tape.
Applying the garage floor paint
Mixing the garage floor paint was a lot easier than we thought it would be and the floor kit comes with the roller. It's 1-part epoxy and has clear instructions for mixing.
Each kit covers about a 10 x 10 area, so for a standard 2 car garage like mine you would need 4 kits. It is pretty thick stuff, so we found that we needed one extra kit to get the coverage we wanted.
Again we started at the back wall furthest from the garage door and worked in one 10 x 10 area at a time by pouring about 3 inch ribbons of paint about 5 feet across.
Then move around the paint with your roller in a W pattern over and over again until you have even distribution. I found that it was easier to pull the paint than it was to push it, so when you pour your garage floor paint, pour it pretty close to where you left off.
Once it's evenly distributed you go back to the area you just painted and with your roller you lightly rub in a small circular pattern so that when the floor paint dries it has a really cool marble effect.
Don't worry too much about getting it to look perfect. Even the spots I thought would dry weird didn't and it looks really cool when there isn't a perfect pattern of circles going on.
We left it alone for 24 hours and it looks so good!
I think the part that surprised me the most was how shiny it is, but it doesn't feel very slippery.
So excited about this clean slate we now have to get organized once and for all! Looks like my dream of parking a car in the garage before the end of the year might just come true after all!
We have a ways to go because we promised ourselves that nothing is coming back in here that we don't need and we have a lot of stuff to go through, but we're thrilled with how the floor looks (and feels) and it's got us really motivated to get our garage organized once and for all!
UPDATE: We did it! See the final result of our garage makeover and all of the DIY organization systems that saved us a ton of money.
A big THANK YOU to Rust-Oleum for sponsoring this post. All opinions are 100% my own and I'm happy to recommend a great product like this one.
Other Things to Consider When Choosing Colors For Your Home
A lot of factors go into selecting colors for your home, and it goes way beyond paint color.
Things like your home color palette, existing colors in your home (that you may not be able to change), and the color of the natural light, or lack of natural light can change the way a color shows up in your home.
In my self-paced online color course, Color Made Clear, I walk you through all the steps to choosing and using color in your home to create a pulled together and cohesive look, even if you have things like cabinet color or floors you can't change.
