Not Your Father’s Garage Anymore

As our time on earth increases, our personal standards change. Usually for the better, and it’s no different regarding our personal spaces. The large sized home or car of today is not the same as the one thirty years ago, similarly regarding the demands of our garages.

In today’s homes, you may find it to function as a small recreation center, an exercise studio, a library, a martial arts dojo, a home theatre, or even another bedroom. Consequently, the standardized cement floors of drab grey and suspect leveling do not suffice. Instead, the finishing floor touches in garage homes today demand similarity to the grade and design appeal of the floors appropriately placed for any other room of the house, from kitchen to master bath.

Today’s builders receive orders for not just proper garage floor leveling and drainage, but also edge sealing, electrical heating, close crop carpeting, a garage cement floor with an epoxy sealant, interlocking tiles, and so much more for these once neglected floors. Furthermore, families and owners do not necessarily consider resale values when selecting garage flooring. Instead, they can focus on their and their family members’ planned usage for the space since any nontraditional type would likely outbid any comparables.

Certain designs and materials lend themselves favorable to certain activities. For traditional usage but with modern day flare, you may want to consider a durable, plastic, rubbery material like interlocking tiles or nitro roll which allow your floor to breath and can withstand heavy poundage. For use that requires close and frequent contact between your person and the floor, say exercise gym or Legos play area for toddlers, you’ll want to consider ‘dance tile’ grade flooring. But if you really want to dance, perhaps as an adjunct stream of income, consider epoxy flooring coatings with a polyurethane finish.

There are innumerable ways to add appeal and function to your garage floor. In all cases you will want to assess the following possible needs: leveling, stripping, priming, subflooring, concrete painting, underlayment, aeration during the rebuild, sealing, and optionally tile midflooring, leather buck tiling, 3D imaging epoxy, adding decorative flakes, heated top flooring, tile carpeting, resin finish application, modular polypropylene tiling, area carpeting, terracotta tiling, metallic epoxy, slate tiling, etc. The options are literally endless, only limited by your imagination and willingness to put in the sweat equity and/or hard cash.

Once a relic of shame and hideaway places, today’s garage represents creativity, industry, and maximization of covered space. Cars have almost been banished from it, and even paint and shop materials have a shelf whereas they used to indiscriminately monopolize the whole area. Yes, it’s time to upgrade.