Basement floor coating, starting with a dry slab

Why we check for moisture before we quote a basement

Water is the one real threat to any concrete coating. A basement slab sits in the ground, so if moisture is pushing up through it, that water has to escape somewhere. Coat over it and the water eventually lifts the floor from underneath. We'd rather wait for a dry slab than come back to a failed floor.

When a slab is damp, we have ways to dry it out before we coat:

• Waiting for a dry stretch of weather instead of forcing the install date
• Grinding, since the dust itself pulls moisture out of the surface
• Acetone on damp spots, plus fans and covering the slab until it's ready

If you've seen white crust on the concrete, dark patches after a rain, or water along a wall, send us photos of those spots first. It usually changes the install date more than the price.

Big basements and where your furniture goes

The question we hear most about basements isn't about the coating. It's "where do I put all my stuff?" Basements are big, open, and full of couches, gym equipment and storage shelves. Here's how it works with us:

• Please move the small items yourself: boxes, decor, anything you can carry. We don't want our crew handling your personal things.
• Heavier pieces can often go onto a carpeted area of the basement or into another room while we work, and then the floor gets done in one visit.
• When there's truly nowhere else to put things, we can split a large basement into two halves. We coat one side, let it cure, move your furniture onto it, and come back to finish the other side later that week.

Splitting the job isn't a rule for big basements. It's a call we make on each job, and we'll always do what's best for you and your floor.

The work, from bare slab to finished floor

The system is the same one we put in garages: diamond grind, repair, polyurea base coat, full flake, polyaspartic topcoat. Basements usually have fewer salt pits than garages, but they tend to have more square footage, more corners, and more patched or uneven spots from past remodels. We fill cracks and joints with polygrout, and even hairline cracks get cut out and stitched so they don't come back through.

Because the polyurea and polyaspartic give us about 15 to 18 minutes of working time per batch, a big basement is worked in sections by people who have done it many times. We train every installer in house on our own jobs.

What a coated basement looks like

A full flake floor reads like stone, cleans with a damp mop, and handles a dropped dumbbell or a spilled drink without a mark. Lighter blends brighten a basement that doesn't get much daylight. Darker, busier blends hide dust and pet hair. See the full set on our flake color page, where you can also try a color on a photo of your own floor.

Basements we coat

We coat basements across Livingston County and western Oakland County, including Howell, Brighton, Milford and South Lyon. Winter is a good time to book a basement, since the work happens inside.

Basement coating questions