DIY or Hire It Out

This gets written about as a choice between two things, and there are three. You can install it yourself, you can pay somebody to do the whole job, or you can buy the coatings here and have a local installer lay them. That third one is what most people are actually looking for and nobody advertises it.

What a full professional job costs

For a two-car garage, a flake floor from an established installer typically runs somewhere between six and twelve thousand dollars depending on your region, the condition of the slab and how much preparation it needs. Coatings sold as premium go higher.

You are buying three things in that number, and it is worth separating them: the materials, the labor, and the fact that somebody else carries the risk if it fails. The materials are usually the smallest of the three.

What doing it yourself actually involves

The coating is the easy part. Here is the honest list.

• A day of grinding. Four to eight hours behind a rented machine on a two-car garage, longer if the slab fights you. This is the part that decides whether the floor lasts, and it is genuinely hard work.
• Two people minimum on coating day. Three is better. Once the material is mixed there is a clock you cannot pause, and one person cannot mix, carry, spread and broadcast inside it.
• Rental equipment. A grinder with the right heads and a HEPA extractor, typically a couple of hundred dollars for the day.
• A weekend, committed. Preparation one day, coating the next, and the second one cannot slip because the recoat windows are measured in hours.

None of that is beyond a competent person. The day itself sets out exactly who stands where and does what. But it is a real weekend of real work, and anybody telling you it is a light afternoon is selling something.

The option nobody mentions: buy the coatings, hire the labor

There is no rule that says a kit has to be installed by the person who bought it.

Buy the system here, then hire a local flooring contractor, a concrete finisher, or a handyman with a grinder to lay it. You get the coating you chose rather than whatever your installer buys in bulk, you know exactly what is going on your floor because you picked it, and you pay for labor instead of labor plus a markup on materials somebody else selected.

It suits a lot of people: anybody who does not want to spend a weekend on their knees, anybody without a second pair of hands available, anybody whose back has opinions, and anybody who simply values the weekend more than the saving.

How to hire for it

You are hiring for surface preparation and a clock, not for coating expertise — the system tells them what to do, and we will send them the same documentation we send you.

• Ask what they will grind with. The answer should involve a diamond grinder and a HEPA extractor. If it involves acid, keep looking.
• Say it is a two-day job. Preparation, then coating the following day. Anybody proposing to do both in one is planning to cut the preparation.
• Tell them the working window. Around twenty minutes once mixed. A crew that has laid polyaspartic will nod; one that has not needs to know before they quote.
• Send them the documentation. Every layer, every timing, every recoat window is published on this site, and there is a briefing they can hand to an AI assistant if they want to ask it questions on the day.

Labor for a two-car garage typically lands somewhere between one and three thousand dollars depending on your area and the state of the slab. With the materials from us, that usually comes in well under a full-service quote — and the floor is the one you chose.

Which one is right for you

• Do it yourself if you have a free weekend, at least one helper, and you are comfortable with a day of grinding. This is the cheapest route by a wide margin.
• Buy the coatings and hire the labor if you want this specific floor without the weekend. Most of the saving, none of the work.
• Hire the whole job if you would rather one company owned the outcome end to end, and you are content with whatever system they specify.

We are glad to sell you the materials for either of the first two. If you are going the hired route and your installer has questions about the system, tell them to get in touch — we would rather answer them properly than have somebody guess on your floor.