Joel's garage build / organization

[freeskier7791]

So happy for you guys!  That floor is gonna look awesome.  I have finally gotten my garage to presentable and I love the feeling

[slowk1500]

Any updates???

[frijolee]

Hellfire floor is done (and rad).  We're moved...  Rental is surrendered but have a ton of work to do getting settled in.  Right now it's the phase of box hell (when life revolves around emptying cardboard receptacles)

Teaser pic until I can sit down and work a write up properly...



-Joel

[jwvand02]

I hadn't heard of the Hellfire coating before. I see that it's relatively heat resistant - I'm interested to hear how it holds up to welding spatter

[frijolee]

Ok gents...  Here comes the Hellfire review, note I'm also going to be cross posting this as a review at garage journal so feel free to check there if you want some added chatter.
https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=437987

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Wanted to chime in with a post regarding my experience with Legacy Industrial’s “Hellfire” polyurea floor coating. 

I got turned onto the product after finding the review section over at “All Garage Floors.”  The editors over there are pretty specific that the newish single-part polyurea coatings (which hit the market around 2015) are their favorite coatings for DIY folks.
https://allgaragefloors.com/polyurea-best-garage-floor-coating-kits/

Hellfire is a newer product, but I liked what I was reading especially in terms of heat resistance (no hot tire pickup ever, probably handles grinding and weld slag better)
https://allgaragefloors.com/hellfire-floor-coating-review/

This is my second garage coating effort having done an acid stain floor back in Southern California that turned out really well: 




If you’re curious there’s a similarly detailed write up on that process here:  https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=285957 the acid stain bits starts in post 10.

These days I’d probably be looking at straight stain rather than acid stain, however my new place needs something intended for abuse and Hellfire looked to meet that need.



Bottom line up front:  Legacy Industrial is a great establishment--my very positive experience with the first floor was part of why I went back to them--customer service is on point, and thus far I like Hellfire as a floor coating product a great deal.  It’s goes on easy, it’s damn tough, and far more forgiving than a “fancy floor” so I find I don’t have to think about it.

The space:  ~2100 square feet of garage, workshop, and concrete-floored garden room on 3 acres of the Big Island, Hawaii.  Eventually I plan to try out Hellfire as metal coating substrate as well since I have some left. 

Starting points…

Garage (640 sq ft):






Workshop (1350 sq ft):








Garden room (maybe 100 sq ft behind the garage).






This is country living so the floor is gonna get used hard. 

--Chemicals: I have three project cars: a widebody v8 powered rx7, a long arm Jeep XJ, and a Toyota FJ40 rock crawler on 41s that I’m building up slowly.  There are definitely some oil leaks that this floor needs to handle.  I’ll try to keep brake fluid off it (because I’m not an idiot who needs to push my luck, regardless of the claims)

--UV. The Big Island contains the southern most tip of the USA.  The air is perfect (I work on big telescopes as my day job) so the tropical sun is going to give this a workout with some exposed thresholds peaking out under roll up doors at both ends.

--Abrasion:  Portions of the driveway were once gravel, now pretty much dirt.  So I’ll be tracking in mud and rocks with some degree of regularity.  I also do machine work so this floor is going to get covered in metal shavings and the like.

--Weld slag.  The FJ40 is still getting welded on plenty so we’ll see how this stands up to some heat.


By the way, my wife and I are new owners of this home, so this all needed to go down in the midst of moving week since I was in the process of surrendering a rental home.  The clock’s ticking and I need this floor dry enough to move some heavy equipment across it in very short order.

There’s also some serious prep work to do…  The shop once had paint booth in the corner and it’s got old nasty paint flaking up damn near 1/8” thick in places.  It’s filthy dirty from being used as a wood shop and also covered in skid steer tracks from heavy equipment rolling in and out.

Let’s do this thing!
-Joel Payne

PS: the project’s all done but I’ll be documenting the prep, use, and results over the next week or so…

[digitalsolo]

I’m excited for this one!

[frijolee]

The plan:

1)      Plastic bag concrete test for wetness (during escrow)
2)      Get stuff ordered in time for the slow boat to Hawaii to get it here on time
3)      Close escrow and be sanding/cleaning floors the same day Tuesday, Oct 15
4)      3 coats applied, all on Oct 16
5)      Drying time Oct 17 & 18
6)      Big moving party with a gang of friends recruited Oct 19
7)      Move in the heavy equipment Oct 22
8 )      Surrender keys to rental Oct 23

It worked out but some margin is recommended vs. the above.  My plan was aggressive!

Moisture test first…  Duct tape down some clear plastic for 24 hours and check for condensation forming under the bag.  If it’s dry you’re good.  If you have a damp spot you need to order a test kit.   More info here: https://allgaragefloors.com/concrete-moisture-test/

During the escrow “inspection period” I checked 4 spots focusing on areas near doors to be sure I had coverage.  Some of the slabs were clearly poured at different times I wanted to compare those too.


 

Good news, concrete looks dry so I’m off to the races…


 

Time to order stufff!

Sourced from Legacy:

--18 gallons of Hellfire (7+6+5 gallons for 3 coats using the conservative coverage numbers and rounding up): https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating.html)

--2x 8 ounce bottles of pigment (to be mixed 3.3 ounces per gallon on the last 5 gallons so somewhat darker than “citadel” which would be 2 ounces per gal.)
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating-pigment.html

--12x 18" rollers 3/8 nap (assumed to be 2x people rolling, 3x coats, fresh rollers midway per coat on the net 2000 sqft)
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/roller-sleeves.html

-2x 18” roller frames “basic duty”
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/roller-frame.html

-mixing wand
https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/tools-accessories/mixing-wand.html


I picked up paint trays, gloves, and respirators local.  I had handles for the frames already.  I thought I had anti-skid leftover from the prior floor but ended up not finding it (and not really needed it, but that would depend on your floor prep).

Shipping to Hawaii is never easy but everything arrived whole well strapped down to a pallet and well packed within each box as well.


 

I know I’m a nerdy engineer but I still liked the detail on the boxes where each flap extends down between adjacent cans to protect them from one another.  Nice little details there…


 

Plan’s in place.   All materials here.  Now I was just waiting for escrow to close.

[frijolee]

I should also mention up front that I had two key helpers in that my folks just happened to be visiting from California.  They booked the trip months prior and it just worked out that they landed the day before escrow closed.  I honestly felt a little guilty about how hard we worked on their “vacation” since they’re in their 70s.    Anyways, they love me.

We asked about the ability to gain access to the home before closure but that was a no (for liability reasons).  Instead I was at Home Depot in Hilo by 7:30 am on Oct 15 to rent a floor machine.

There are basically two versions of rental floor machine available, floor maintainer and floor grinder
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Floor-Maintainer/01278A/
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Concrete-Grinder-10/50200-HD/index.html

If you go for the the 17" spinning "floor maintainer" you can either can put sanding pads on (think scotch brite for floors, my approach last time), or you can rent a dimabrush which is a step heavier and uses diamond impregnated paddles as an abrasive media.
https://www.homedepot.com/tool-truck-rental/Coating-Removal-Disc-7/12569/index.html

With some 2,000 square feet of floor to do I was planning on the dimabrush approach until I discovered my Home Depot's rental floor maintainers didn't include a vaccum hookup.  (Note, this isn’t true for all, I did the floor maintainer approach w/ shop vac hookup last time.  Check your local rental supply.)

Lack of a vacuum hookup was a deal breaker for me so I jumped up a step gnarlier and instead rented the 10" floor grinder.  It weights something like 160 lbs so plan on a friend to help load and unload.  The business end is not screwing around.


 

At the end of the day I was glad I went big since my floor was pretty gross in a bunch of places.  Here’s the old paint booth leftover I mentioned that’s flaking off about 1/8" thick.


 

Pro tip number 1.  The technique for the floor grinder is to swing it back and forth, not march in straight lines (a mowing the lawn approach leaves more grooves).




Pro tip number 2.  Your shop vac is gonna take a bearing.  Plan on two filters so you can knock the dust out every 5 minutes or so.  The filter will clog with the finest dust ever.  It's fluffy, but heavy if that makes any sense at all.  Best guess I took 150-200 lbs out of my floor. It sounds like a lot but it was maybe 4-5 trash bags partly filled (but heavy enough to be in danger if breaking).

The other cool thing about the grinder is that it really highlights areas that aren't quite as flat in the floor.  You can visually see where you've been and it's kind satisfying to shave on the seam just a bit more and know that the floor is now flatter than it was.




Here’s the texture it leaves:




By the way, while I was grinding my father was filling a mess of small holes and some hairline cracks. 


 

There may be better products available but Home Depot had a Quickcrete product available that we took a chance on and it seemed fine.   https://www.homedepot.com/p/Quikrete-1-Qt-Concrete-Crack-Sealant-864000/100318507

Got a little nervous when it started raining outside.  Even with a shop vac attached the grinding process puts out enough dust you’ll want some airflow.  Didn’t get things TOOO wet, so we’ll just have to risk it picking up some moisture prior to paint.




When you're done grinding (which by the way takes about an hour per 200 sqft in my experience) everything is covered in fine white dust. 


 

Go after it with your shop vac and a floor attachment and suddenly you can really see what’s going on. After a decent vac'ing I become painfully aware of the low spots you missed.


 

Oh and regardless of technique, you're still gonna leave swirl looking grooves as you change direction with the machine.  Generally barely deep enough to catch a fingernail on but you can see them.




If you care, you might need to figure out a multistage grinding process.  There is a process to dial in flatness of the grinding head—which I did… you basically set the grinder down, grind briefly and be sure you carve an even circle--but adjustments only goes so far when the machine gets moving with momentum.

After vacuuming and see what was up, I wasn’t stoked on having “missed spots” and since my floor was so filthy I wanted to give the Hellfire every chance I could of sticking.  Soooo... Took a second pass with the grinder.  All in I worked a 19 hour day, a solid 14 of which was on the grinder.

Oh yeah, don’t forget the gloves, then don’t forget the bandaids when you get blisters anyways.  Better yet don’t try to do 2,000 square feet in a day.  That said, the rental grinder runs ~$200 a day so if you gotta hustle, you gotta hustle, just be ready for it.
 
That's how I ended day 1 (Tuesday Oct 15) with Saturday being the move day.

[Cobranut]

Looking good Joel,

It's so cool to have your parents involved.  You'll cherish those memories every time you do any work in that shop.

My late Dad helped me build my garage and shop, and even helped as much as he could on my home a number of years later, though sadly we lost him before construction was complete.  I really regret he never got to see the finished product.

Years earlier they had both helped when I was building my Cobra, which is one of the reasons I could never think of selling that car. 

[frijolee]

Great story Cobra and a great memory re your shop.  I am sorry about your loss...  I agree that some of the best memories with my P's involve sacrificial acts of service.  I was a junior higher when my dad and I spent a month of evenings and weekends building balsa wood bridges for Science Olympiad.  We were up way too late for a junior higher and a doctor, but I think about that kinds of stuff sometimes when doing things with my own kids. 

Fast forward to high school Joel and I once wrecked an ankle badly in a gofer hole having bailed out of a BMX jump.  I was the only BMX wreck I can remember where I didn't make it home under my own power and had to be rescued.  My dad canceled his schedule and drove me around for X-rays and such.  Later that evening, I was commenting to my mom that it was a really cool thing for him to do and her response "Did you know that this was actually one of his wedding vows?"  Turns out one my dad's vows was "I will never put my career ahead of my family" and blowing off his schedule to rescue his son was an easy choice for a guy who'd take such a vow.

Fast forward another decade or so and I made my wife the same promise when we stood at an alter.      Good times.

[frijolee]

For heavy vacuuming, someone on GJ pointed out that a cyclone vacuum attachment would go a long away toward making the filter breathe easier. 

You'd have to figure out how to drag it along with your shop vac but the gent pointed out that Home Depot sells a cyclone bucket lid that turns a bucket into a dust collector:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Dustoppe...HD12/302643445

[frijolee]

Wed Oct 16…

Since the next step before paint was a lot more vacuuming I ended up going in to the office for work the next day while my folks promised to return the grinder within the 24 hour window at Home Depot's store opening and then clean the shop/garage.  Hilo is about an hour's drive away so a HD run isn't trivial where I live on the Big Island.

Turns out I have a gracious boss and he knew I was humping it this week, so I bailed out of office at about 2 pm.  I’d heard the cleaning was still going and I was getting a bit nervous about being able to get 3 coats down.

I arrived back home to find that yes, deep cleaning takes time, even when it’s only vacuum and a leaf blower.  Which brings me to another important tip.  Per Scotty from Legacy:  Don’t prep with water!  There’s a video floating around of a Hellfire install where the dude uses a floor maintainer wet and then mops everything as one of the prep stages.  Video link attached for ref:



Excess water is bad.  Moisture in the air is what makes single stage polyurea kick!  I just did a test to be sure the concrete was dry enough, so of course I don’t want to add more moisture.  If you must, per Scotty denatured alcohol is the hot ticket to clean things the grinder/floor maintainer can’t reach (edged of poles, corners, etc). 




A couple last minute audibles that I found helped:

Angle grinder and wire wheel to clean up the edge metal along the walls (and junk wedged under the edge).




Shop vac with the angle tip to ram down in the all the floor seams.  It was impressive how much crap I pulled out of the concrete cut lines.




Pardon the lousy focus, I was hustling and this was the only picture snagged at this stage, but I think you get the ideal of angle of attack…




The more it does a number on your vacuum tip the better the remaining edge digs down in the seams to loosen dirt and crap.




After…  It looks wet but it’s really still just age vs the freshly ground whiteness close by.




5 pm Oct 16 and we’re finally ready to paint.  You’ll want to read all the spec sheets and stuff on Legacy’s page.  They’re linked at the bottom.

https://www.legacyindustrial.net/products/hellfire-coating/hellfire-concrete-coating.html

Key Stuff:
275-300 sq ft per gal coat 1
325-350 sq ft per gal coat 2
375-400 sq ft per gal coat 3

(I bought enough for the low end of coverage, I would have been fine at the high end)

Given the recoat window is 2-3 hours we were going to have to hustle to get three coats down… 

Game time…

[frijolee]

First things first, this stuff smells every bit as strongly as you’ve heard (assuming this isn’t your first stop researching floor coatings).

Find proper respirators.




Pro-tip:  I don’t recommend the style with the sealed face shield, mine fogged up to the point that I painted without here and there (bad form I know, but I was outta time and at least I paid attention and never got a headache or symptoms of bad stuff).

Dad and I cut in the edges and seams first (including metal bit around the edge for simplicity) while Mom went straight to proper rolling. 








You could mask edges if you like but I just got extra careful after the one edge blem above…  I was able to mostly blot away the blem with a paper towel…

One tip I discovered for myself:  don’t use a red solo cup for cutting in edges.  You have about a 5 minute window before Hellfire melts the cup and bottom falls out.  Ask me how I know.






Having a staging area close by is a good call… 




Picked up some big bucket style paint trays from a local hardware store (HPM).  First time using this style but these worked GREAT.




Hellfire tries to separate a bit (assume it’s the aluminum falling out of suspension) so you definitely need to mix thoroughly.  It behaves a bit like mixing hammered finish paint, if you’ve ever played with that stuff.  Kinda forgot about the mixing wand until later but we still got it done.

[frijolee]

Tips on application (part Legacy’s recommendations, part my findings)

1)   Cut the seams and edges first, this worked really well.
2)   Don’t pour it on the floor.  You need to use a tray and roll it out or it absorbs in too quickly and can be hard to handle.
3)   Thin coats.
4)   Back roll after application.  I found I’d do maybe an area 3 ft x 10 ft (per brush dipping) but it helps to eliminate brush marks if you give the entire section a second rolling over before you move on. 




5)   Don’t push down too hard.  It’s tempting since you’re trying to drive paint into cracks and such but at least with the “basic frame” it can spread the frame and suddenly the roller springs free.  It helps to be sure the frames are adjusted snug and some of the roller caps are different thicknesses (assume it what comes with frames vs. what comes with rollers)




6)   Wear rubber gloves (I don’t think it matters if you prefer latex or nitrile.) 
Disclaimer…  I almost never wear gloves.  My hands sweat and feel gross in short order and this is obviously an extended process...  However when the roller pops free and you’re in a hurry you might just think “screw it” and grab the roller bare handed to re-install.  Yeah… so I think you can see where this is headed.  I didn’t wear gloves.  I did grab the roller.  I was wearing Hellfire for far longer than I thought was possible.  (More on this later).
7)   Finally, get clever on your way in and out.  I painted half of my threshold into from garage into workshop so this would be well into the 2-3 hour recoat time (honestly it seemed pretty dry) by the time the time you paint your way out the other side of the threshold.





8 )   Consider bugs.  I live in the country and it was dead dark at this point so I had to have both roll up doors down to keep the moths out (I have manual roll up doors so I dialed them down to maybe a 1/4" gap).  Still that was easier than picking them out as I went along.  Case in point, I picked out the piece of grit at bottom right in this shot.




And here we go with the first coat done.  Obviously still very thin and still learning how to minimize brush marks.  The back rolling thing really helps.




Second coat going down.  Paint is going notably further this round so we’re still painting thin but not being as careful about SUPER thin.




I’m wrapping up the second coat trying to do the same strategy of painting my way in and out of the small doorway when I screw things up.  I step a bit too far to the side and leave a big ol’ footprint in paint that wasn’t quite dry. 

That sucked…  so I immediately paint over it to hide my error… and in doing so, promptly paint myself out of the doorway with no dry way left in to the workshop...

OH MAN, I didn’t think that through did I?  It’s 11:00 pm and now have at least 2.5 hours to dry instead of a half hour or hour I would have needed.  My folks are already taking a nap on the one patch of carpet in our empty house.  Am I doing the last coat myself at 2 am?  STUPID move... Agghh.

Well, there’s nothing to be done but wait.  I set an alarm on my phone and try to nap myself.  Sleep is not happening but a rest ain’t gonna hurt me.

I get up around a half past midnight go mix paint in prep for the third and final coat.  Note, round 3 is where--given the benefit of hindsight--I might have done things differently.

-Joel

[digitalsolo]

really enjoying this walkthrough Joel!