Home Improvement Today?

Has anyone used a self leveling compound on a garage floor that actually sees garage use? As in floor jack and jack stands. I was looking at the Mapei self leveler and their reps said it isn’t meant to be a finished surface and is intended to level an underlayment that will be covered with flooring. They said at the very least to coat it with a 1/8” layer of epoxy for use but didn’t mention how strong it would be as a garage floor. My main concern is cracking/chipping under the weight of jack stands and rolling heavy shop equipment on it. I was wondering if there are other products I should consider. Could I just water down some high PSI cement and use that?

i wanted to level out some low spots in my garage floor. It’s in relatively good shape other than some small nicks from previous carpet tacks and residual vinyl tile adhesive. I’m already planning on stripping the top layer and patching plus taking proper steps to adhesion but was curious if anyone else has done the same and what they used.

 

Last three days after work I’ve gotten the old siding/windows ripped out and the new windows and paper put up. Helping a friend out tomorrow with some foundation work at his house so Sunday I’ll hopefully have all the j channel up so next week I can bang out the siding.

Starting to get cold so I’m running out of time. Might not get to the last two windows/siding on the right side of the house before winter hits.

 

Yes. The slab is in decent shape, just has small nicks and a couple low spots. Not to mention the paint and vinyl tile adhesive.

 

I haven’t used a SLC in a garage, but I have used it on a wood subfloor. Mixing it using the directions it definitely would not be hard enough to use without a floor on top. Watering down cement will decrease its strength and I don’t think that would work too well either. Are you looking to use SLC to just fill holes and divots? Or to actually level? For holes and such, I’d use a patch compound made for cement. If you really need to level your floor, and did go the SLC route, maybe you could put a garage tile system on top.

 

Can't offer any input on the leveler, but I rented the concrete prep tool/wheel and floor polisher from Home Depot and had great results. First time was on a six month fresh pad and second time was on the 30 year olde attached garage that had been used hard, and it kicked ass. If you use it be prepared to use a lot of water in order to keep the "teeth" on the wheel flushed out. We did the attached two car garage (20x20) with some extra sq/ft in about 6 hours.

 

That sounds about what I was expecting. Thanks Bob! Do you think it’ll “grind” enough where I can level out small imperfections? I’m thinking like an angle grinder where if I work one area longer I can smooth it out more.

 

Once you get the "hang" of the buffer you can definitely angle it to be more aggressive in one area. Our fresh pad had a lot of build up and bad spots that I was able to work out. There are flooring wheels for the angle grinder just for that reason. If you go that route definitely have the PPE out!

 

Nothing like popping off a light fixture to figure out why it looks like it’s falling off the wall and finding some moron put the drywall anchor THROUGH the mounting plate rather than behind...wtf...no wonder why it was pulling away from the wall

 

That's some beauty stone work. Massive natural stone like that always looks so good and it looks good for a long time. I see so many retaining walls and the like done with concrete block or poured walls with fake stone facades that can't help but look fake and cheap. I like what these guys are doing. Can't wait to see the house all wrapped up.

 

I’d be extremely careful with an angle grinder. Spot sanding actually makes larger deviations . It would be best to feather them out.

 

Working through my mile long honey-do list on the new house. Finally got around to the garage a week later (just moved in last Tuesday). Waiting on movers to come collect their boxes and paper and to sell the dryer (gas, new house is only electric) and city tondeliver my trash cans. After that garage will look decent. I have about 3ft above the garage door when it’s open that I want to turn into storage eventually.



Oh and

 

I miss my 3car garage haha. It was had a tandem bay that was PERFECT as a storage/small workbench area

 

Concrete patch on a crack in prep for the tile floor. Probably overkill but wanted to try the patch. Works well.

 

I’m about 100ft short of a 1/4 acre on a wedge shaped lot. Plenty of room to add a shed back there and room on both sides if I wanted to add a parking pad. We will see before I go that route as we know this isn’t our forever house. If we stay here after I retire it will probably turn into a rental and we’ll move elsewhere in town.

 

Didn't realize you moved. Hope all is good!

 

So that floor that I patched a crack on before tile is very uneven. Laid out some tile today to test fit/look and there’s 1/4 variance in most places. Will this fill with tile mortar or should I level first?

 

https://www.ardexamericas.com/product/ardex-feather-finish/

 

Got ALOT of yard in this new place. Very blank canvas. Not sure what we’re gonna do to it yet but a patio cover is high pri (dog likes to play in the mud). Started some yard work but the self-propel stopped working on my mower and after 2hr of pushing, I quit for the day haha. This was before.



This is after (half done)




And can’t forget the boss, was sleeping on the job for a bit there

 

Congrats. I closed on my first house and started moving in on the same day. I have to pick up my mower and grill from the rental tomorrow and hit the hardware store for a rake at the very least to start cleaning up my yard.

 

Tenant asked us to tighten the seat on his toilet and then mentioned that he had issues of water dripping from the bathroom upstairs to his kitchen downstairs, the bathroom floor is rotted out so we’re replacing about half of the floor.