Epoxy Repair and Recoat · Shelby Township

Epoxy Repair and Recoat in Shelby Township, MI

Name: Shelby Township Epoxy Flooring
Address: Shelby Township, MI, US
Telephone: +15867880530
Price range: $$

We grind off the failed coating, read what went wrong, and lay the system the slab should have had. Most jobs wrap in a day.

Call +15867880530 Get a free quote

❦1 day installs · typical timeline

Garage floor freshly recoated with glossy charcoal flake epoxy.

Macro of blend zone between recoated and older epoxy.

What we install

Why a coating fails, and what your slab is telling you

A Shelby Township garage with peeled, chipping, hazed, or gummy epoxy is almost always a coating story. The slab itself is usually fine. The product laid on top of it was the wrong call. We see the same three causes again and again. Box store kits, with one soft water based layer, peel inside two or three winters. Floors with no polyaspartic on top yellow and turn gummy through the first July. Coatings rolled onto an unprimed slab lift in whole sheets once vapor pressure builds under them. Every one of the three is fixable. But only after the failed coating comes off in full.

A real repair starts at the visit, with a small test grind about a foot square through the failed coating so we can read it firsthand. The diagnosis drives the quote, never a guess from a phone photo. Most jobs then run a full grind back to fresh concrete. Cracks get a polyurea fill. Spalled zones, where the old coating tore aggregate up with it, get a mortar patch. From there we run the standard system: a primer matched to the current vapor reading, a solids epoxy base, a full flake broadcast, and a polyaspartic topcoat. The finished floor behaves like a fresh install on a new slab, because the prep was rebuilt from the slab up.

We open a test grind during the visit, so the quote follows the reading.
The failed coating comes off fully, back to fresh concrete, not feathered thin.
We mortar patch the slab zones where the old coating tore concrete up.
The reinstall uses the same materials and steps as a fresh concrete floor.
A one or two car garage usually wraps the repair inside one working day.

The concrete is usually sound. The wrong coating went over it, and pulling that coating off is the fix.

Most repair calls in Macomb County come from one of two places. Homeowners who rolled on a DIY kit two summers back and now stand on lifted flake. Owners who hired a cheap crew and watched the floor let go after the first humid August. Both floors recover. Whether we recoat or send you toward a slab tear out depends on what the test grind shows. That is why we run the grind during the visit, before we write a number, and never skip it.

If a failing epoxy floor is the headache in your Shelby Township garage or basement, the fix is almost always a recoat. A full tear out is rare. The form on this page sends your request straight to our crew. We follow up to set the free visit with the test grind. Most owners are surprised how much less a recoat runs than ripping the slab out.

Materials

What the test grind shows on the spot

A failed epoxy floor lets go for a short list of reasons, and the test grind tells us which one inside the first twenty minutes of the visit. We mark a section about a foot square, run a small grinder across it, and watch how the old coating answers. A coating that lifts off the slab in clean sheets never gripped it in the first place. Almost always because the prep was an acid etch or a pressure rinse instead of a real grind. A coating that drags chunks of aggregate up with it gripped too hard to a slab that was already weak below the surface, from water damage, spalling after years of hard freezes, or old chemical exposure. A coating that grinds away in a thin even layer with sound concrete under it is the easy read. The slab is fine. The product was simply wrong for the conditions.

Once we name the failure, the repair plan follows on its own. Most jobs run a full grind and reinstall. Some need extra mortar patching wherever the old coating pulled aggregate up during removal. The reinstall is the same standard system we lay on bare concrete. First a vapor matched primer, sized to the slab's moisture reading today, not the reading from when the first coating went down years ago. Then a solids epoxy base, a full chip broadcast, and a polyaspartic topcoat. The new floor does not inherit whatever was wrong with the old one. It behaves like a fresh install on a clean slab.

The test grind happens during the visit, before any quote.
Three failure modes the grind tells apart: bad prep, weak slab, wrong product.
Full removal beats a thin refresh whenever the old product truly failed.
Slab patching enters scope only where aggregate came up with the coating.

What about the alternatives?

Repair routes measured by what they fix

Bids on a failing floor usually land in one of the five buckets below. Only one of them fixes the actual cause. The other four buy time, push the cost down the road, or in two cases all but promise a repeat failure on schedule.

Paint over the failed coating

Cheapest cosmetic pass. It sticks to the failed coating, not the slab. Comes apart in six to eighteen months, and both layers lift together.

Skip

Thin refresh sealer over the existing floor

Adds a clear or pigmented topcoat over the failed layer. Buys two or three cosmetic years at most. Does nothing for the grip or the moisture cause.

Skip

Local patching of one zone only

Works when the failure is small, under ten percent of the floor, and the rest reads sound on the grind. Rare to be that contained.

Acceptable

Full grind and reinstall

The actual fix. We pull the failed product, read the cause, and reinstall a system sized to the slab today. The new floor behaves like a fresh install.

Recommended

Tear out and replace the slab

Last resort. Saved for slabs that are structurally bad, like large settling cracks or deep water damage. Rare on home garages.

Acceptable

How it goes

From quote to walk-on, fast.

STEP 01

Free Quote

Submit a few photos or book a free 15-minute on-site visit. The result: a fixed written quote, not an estimate range.

STEP 02

Floor Prep

Diamond-grind the slab, patch every crack, vacuum-fill control joints, and prime against moisture vapor.

STEP 03

Coating

100% solids epoxy base, a full flake broadcast for grip and depth, then a polyaspartic topcoat.

STEP 04

Cure & Enjoy

Walk on it the same evening. Park on it 24 hours later.

Before you book

Questions worth pushing before you sign

Repair work draws more shortcut bids than fresh installs do. You already paid for one floor, so a second number stings. The questions below sort a repair that will hold from one that fails the same way again.

Ours does, at no charge. We run the small grind during the visit, about twenty minutes, and write the failure we actually see into the quote. A quote without that grind is built on what you described over the phone, not on what the slab shows. That is exactly how a repair ends up failing for the same reason the first floor did.

We fill them with a polymer mortar repair compound, let it cure, and grind it flush with the slab around it before the new system lands. Patched areas usually read invisible under the flake broadcast above. Coating straight over a spalled zone without patching is a skipped step. That skip shows through the new floor inside the first season.

Custom chip blends can come close if we have the original recipe. Exact matches across years are rare. A small patch in a low traffic corner usually reads invisible once cured. A big patch, over a fifth of the floor, can show as a faint shade shift under some lighting. Most owners going partial accept that, and a full grind and reinstall removes the matching problem for good.

A recoat holds the same as a fresh install, as long as the moisture reading and the prep were right going in. The one thing we can not speak for is the old cause coming back when it was never dealt with, like steady basement moisture or repeat chemical spills. We walk you through the scope of the job before we start, so you know what the work includes and what sits outside it.

Then we say so before we quote. Coating over a slab with steady moisture pushing through, from a failed sump or a foundation crack that seeps, is a repeat failure waiting to happen within a few years. The real fix there is drainage, a new sump, or a vapor barrier, not another coating. A visit that names a problem outside our scope and tells you to fix that first, sometimes through a different trade, is honest. A crew that just quotes another coating job is selling work that will not last.

Aftercare

Keeping the recoat from failing again

A recoated floor takes the same routine care as a fresh install, plus one extra item. The old failure usually points at a habit or a setup that helped cause it. If the first floor lifted from basement vapor, the new floor still needs the dehumidifier and the sump pump running. If the first floor failed under spills, like battery acid or hot solvent, that spill habit has to change. The recoat itself is built to hold. Whether it holds for good comes down to one thing. Did we deal with what beat the first floor?

Run the basement dehumidifier through spring and early summer, when slab vapor peaks here.
Keep an entry mat at every door. Salt grit helped cause most floor failures.
Wipe oil, brake fluid, and antifreeze the same day. Overnight contact is when chemistry bites.
Scan the floor each season change for new efflorescence, hairline cracks, or dulling.
Anything that looks off, call us right away. Catching it early is half the fix.

FAQ

What Shelby Township owners ask about recoats

We build our floors in layered coats, and that careful stack of primer, base, and top coat is the whole reason they hold up here. A primer grips the bare slab. A thick base coat carries the color flake and gives the floor its body. Then a polyaspartic top coat seals the whole thing and takes the daily wear for you. Built that way, a floor in this area holds up for years before it ever needs a fresh top coat. The soft box store kits skip the moisture primer to save a few dollars, so most of them peel inside two or three winters.

Epoxy and polyaspartic do two different jobs inside the same floor. Epoxy is the base layer that grips the slab and builds the thickness you can see. Polyaspartic is the clear top coat above it, and that coat is what gives the floor its hardness, its shine in daylight, and the fast cure that lets us pour on one day and hand you the floor the next. A floor with only epoxy on it stays softer and slowly yellows in the sun. We always pour both so each layer can do the part it is good at.

Three things set the price. The first is the size of the floor. The second is the shape of the slab sitting under it, and the third is the finish you pick. A slab carrying deep cracks, old oil stains, or heavy damp needs far more prep work, so the number runs higher. Metallic pours and dense flake blends sit at the top end of the range. We never quote a loose range over the phone, because that number is almost always wrong. Instead we come look, read the slab in person, and write one clear price after a free walk through.

Yes. The work is all indoors, so as long as the garage holds its heat through the cure, the time of year does not stop us at all. On the coldest days we simply run a heater for a few hours while the top coat sets up. Spring and fall fill up fast around here. Because of that, winter often gives you the shorter wait if you want a fresh floor down before the next salt season hits.

Hot tire pickup is the exact thing that kills cheap coatings. A fully cured polyaspartic top coat is harder than the rubber of a tire, so it holds tight to the base layer even after a long July drive home on the highway. The soft paint kits lift off in patches the moment a hot tire parks on them. That is the failure we build every floor against, coat by coat, right from the prep.

Ready when you are

Ready to get started in Shelby Township?

Send a few photos or book a quick on-site walk-through. A fixed written quote within one business day.

Get a free quote Call (586) 788-0530