When the last coating did not hold
Failed kits, peeling roll on epoxy and coatings another contractor walked away from. We strip it back to concrete and start properly.
Residential work
Why the first coating failed
A good share of the calls Jimmy takes are not for bare slabs. They are for floors that were already coated once and did not hold. A kit that peeled in sheets by the second winter, a roll on epoxy that went milky and lifted at the door, or a job somebody else took the deposit for and left half finished. Refinishing is its own piece of work and it is not the same job as coating fresh concrete.
Almost always it comes back to preparation. The slab was acid etched or pressure washed instead of mechanically ground, so the coating never had a profile to grip and was only ever held on by surface tension. Give that a Pennsylvania winter, some road salt and a hot tire and it releases in sheets.
The second cause is moisture, particularly in a garage built on a slab with no vapor barrier under it. Vapor pushes up, has nowhere to go, and lifts the film. The third is simply thin material, because a consumer kit contains a fraction of the solids a professional system does and there is not enough of it on the floor to survive anything.
Knowing which of those happened matters, because the fix is different each time. We work that out at the walkthrough rather than assuming, and occasionally the answer is that the slab itself has a problem a coating will not solve.
We show up, finish on time, and get it right. No hidden fees, no surprises.
Jimmy and Justyn, Cobra Epoxy
Taking the old system off
Whatever is on there comes off. Loose material gets scraped and shot blasted or ground away, and where a coating is still stuck hard it gets ground through anyway, because coating over somebody else stale film means inheriting their bond. If the old system releases, so does the new one on top of it.
That is the part that makes refinishing slower than new work and it is why an honest price for a strip and recoat is higher than for a bare slab. Anyone quoting you less to go over an existing failed coating than to do a fresh one is planning to coat over the problem.
Once we are back to clean concrete the job becomes a normal build. Repair the cracks and the pitting the failed coating was hiding, prime where the moisture reading calls for it, base coat, full flake broadcast, scrape back, polyaspartic.
What the price covers
Every one of these, every time
The build does not get trimmed to hit a number. If a slab needs more work than expected you hear about it at the walkthrough, not on the invoice.
The order the work happens in
Clear and mask first, which is why the room has to be completely empty before we arrive. A slab cannot be ground in patches around obstacles, because ground and unground areas take the coating differently and the join always shows.
Then grinding, which is the longest and dustiest stage and the one that decides whether the floor lasts. Extraction runs the whole time the machines do, both for the mess and because silica off dry ground concrete is a genuine exposure issue.
Then repair, then the base coat, then the flake broadcast by hand into the wet base until it will not take any more. Those three run together on the same day because the base has a working time and the chip has to be in before it closes.
Day two is the scrape back, the vacuum, and the polyaspartic. You can normally walk on it that evening, put things back the next day, and park on a garage floor after about three days.
What the slab looks like underneath
Stripping a failed floor usually turns up damage nobody knew was there. Spalling under a coating that had been holding the surface together, cracks that opened up and got painted over, and delaminated patches around the door where salt water had been getting in for years.
None of that is a problem, it just needs doing. We fill and level it as part of the job and you get told what we found rather than having it disappear under the new coating. That is the same reason customers keep mentioning prep work in the reviews.
A floor that was ground properly and repaired before the first coat will still look right in ten years.
Cobra Epoxy and Flake Coatings, Boyertown PAWhat a strip and rebuild costs against a fresh slab
A refinish costs more than coating bare concrete and it is worth understanding why, because the pricing surprises people who assume the second coating should be cheaper than the first. All of the work in a floor is in the preparation, and a failed coating adds an entire stage of preparation before the normal one even starts.
Getting the old system off is slow. Shot blasting and grinding through cured film is harder on equipment and on time than opening up clean concrete, and underneath it there is almost always damage that the coating was holding together. That gets repaired as part of the job.
The reason to do it anyway is that the alternative does not work. Coating over a failed film means the new system is only as attached as the old one, and the old one already proved it was not attached. Anyone offering to go over the top of a peeling floor for a low number is selling you the same failure again with a fresh color on it.
On the map
Where we do this work
We run roughly fifty miles out from Boyertown, which covers Berks, Montgomery, Chester and Lehigh counties. The service areas page lists every town.
Not sure whether you are inside that? Call and ask. We would rather tell you honestly than send somebody on a two hour round trip.
Questions
Before you book
The things people ask on the phone before they book, answered the way Jimmy would answer them.
My floor was coated before and it failed. Can you fix it?
Yes, and it is a good share of what we do. The old system comes off completely, because coating over somebody else failed film means inheriting their bond. Then the damage underneath gets repaired and the floor is rebuilt properly. It is more work than a bare slab, so an honest price is higher rather than lower.
How is this different from a kit off the shelf?
A kit gives you a thin film rolled over concrete that was etched rather than ground, which is why so many of them peel within a season. We profile the slab mechanically, use professional grade American made material at a much higher build, and back the result in writing. The material cost is a small part of the difference. The preparation is most of it.
There is a crack right across my garage. Is that bad?
Usually not. A single crack running across a slab is very often a shrinkage crack from the original cure, and if it has not moved in years it repairs permanently. What matters is whether the two sides are level. Run a hand across it, and if you can feel a step, that is movement and a different conversation.
How long will my garage be out of use?
Most residential garages are a two day job. Day one is grinding, repair, base coat and the flake broadcast. Day two is the scrape back and the polyaspartic topcoat. You can usually walk on it that evening and put the car back after about three days, which gives the system time to harden properly before hot tires sit on it.
Will a coating fix a damp basement?
No, and anybody who says it will is selling you a problem. A coating seals the top of the slab, it does not stop water arriving underneath it. If vapor is pushing up hard enough, sealing the surface traps the pressure and the coating lifts in sheets. That is why we measure before we specify, and why the honest answer is occasionally to fix the drainage first.
What happens if something goes wrong later?
You call and we come out. Residential interior floors are covered for life against the system losing bond, and being twenty minutes up the road rather than a franchise head office three states away is what makes that worth anything. One customer had flaws caused by other trades on his house and we fixed those too, which was not covered by anything.
Are you insured?
Yes, and the company holds Pennsylvania home improvement contractor registration 177204, which is on the truck and on the paperwork. The equipment is OSHA certified, which matters on a commercial site and matters in a house because it is your air the grinding dust goes into.
Can you do it soon?
Sometimes, and it is always worth asking. Jobs move and finish early, and when a day opens up it gets offered to whoever is flexible and nearby. Tell us if your dates are loose. What we will not do is squeeze you in by cutting the grinding short.
Book a walkthrough
Get pricing on your garage floor refinishing
Send the details over. Jimmy comes back inside a business day, walks the space, checks what the concrete is doing, and puts honest pricing in front of you before anything is booked.
Six counties from one shop in Boyertown, which is about as far as fifty miles reaches in this direction.
If you would rather speak to somebody, (484) 942-3219. If photographs are easier, jfaust@cobraepoxy.com. Either way the contact page has everything in one place.
Tell us about the floor
Jimmy calls back within a business day, walks the space with you, and puts real pricing in your hands.
More of what we coat: garage epoxy flooring, flake epoxy flooring, commercial epoxy flooring. See finished floors in the gallery, read about Jimmy and Justyn, or check the towns we cover. Ready to talk? Book a walkthrough.