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Epoxy Concrete Floor Coating in Ann Arbor — A Comparison with Polyaspartic
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Epoxy Concrete Floor Coating in Ann Arbor: The Answer
Two Ann Arbor garages tell the same story at different scales. On Country Club Road, a 707-square-foot slab carried a deteriorated epoxy coating that had lost adhesion at the control joints and let oil pool around the floor drain. On Kimberley Road, a smaller 386-square-foot floor had an epoxy coating that had gone the same way — gloss loss, tire staining soaked through, and cracks widening at the joints. Both had to come off before anything else could go down. That is the pattern behind epoxy concrete floor coating in Ann Arbor: it is available cheaper and as a DIY option, but on Michigan concrete it tends to fail first, not last — and when it does, removal becomes part of the job before a longer-lasting system can be installed.
What We Actually Found in Ann Arbor
Among the Ann Arbor projects MotorCity has documented, two are full epoxy removals.
Country Club Road — 707 Sq Ft of Failed Epoxy Around a Floor Drain
At Country Club Road, the existing epoxy coating showed advanced wear across both parking bays. Vehicle fluid had saturated the tire tracks and stained through to the concrete, and the coating had lost adhesion near the control joints — seasonal freeze-thaw cycling had accelerated the cracking along those joint lines. Oil pooling had concentrated near a floor drain at the center of the slab, with contamination that had penetrated below the epoxy itself. MotorCity’s crew stripped the old coating with diamond grinding, working carefully around the drain to keep it functional. Grinding exposed deep pitting concentrated near the drain and cracks that had widened beneath the old coating. The crew bridged the control-joint cracks with semi-rigid filler and flooded the pitted areas with Mender epoxy, filling each void from the bottom up, then finished the full 707 square feet with a polyurea base coat in Silver Creek flake and a polyaspartic topcoat with 16-grit traction additive.
Kimberley Road — 386 Sq Ft of Epoxy Stripped Down to Sound Concrete
At Kimberley Road, the original epoxy coating had degraded across the full 386-square-foot slab — gloss loss, surface contamination, and tire marks and fluid staining that had penetrated the worn surface. Cracks at the control joints had widened through the coating layer, and the coating had lost its bond in several spots near those joints. MotorCity’s crew diamond-ground the epoxy off completely, which also cleared out the contamination that had soaked through it. The concrete underneath turned out to be structurally sound, with no pitting or spalling once the old coating was gone, so the crew moved straight to a polyurea base coat in Glacier flake and a polyaspartic topcoat with a coarser 36-grit traction additive for extra grip.
Both jobs required removing a failed coating before any new system could bond — a cost neither homeowner planned for when the epoxy first went down.
Epoxy or Polyurea-Polyaspartic, Side by Side
| Epoxy | Polyurea-Polyaspartic | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost, installed | $4.50–$8.50/sq ft ($2,000–$3,500, 2-car garage) | $6–$12/sq ft ($2,800–$5,000, 2-car garage) |
| Cure / return-to-service time | Typically several days, longer in cold weather | As little as 24 hours |
| Flexibility under slab movement | Rigid — can crack or telegraph existing cracks | Flexible — moves with the slab |
| UV stability | Prone to yellowing and ambering with sun exposure | Formulated to resist UV yellowing |
| Moisture tolerance | Vulnerable to bubbling and adhesion loss from vapor | More tolerant, especially with a moisture barrier |
| Resistance to road salt | Can lose adhesion under repeated salt exposure | Built for Michigan freeze-thaw and salt exposure |
| Expected service life (SE Michigan) | 7–15 years professional; 1–3 years DIY kit | 15–20 years |
| Who can install it | Widely available, including DIY kits | Requires a trained crew — no DIY route |
For the chemistry behind these differences, see why polyurea-polyaspartic coatings outperform epoxy.
Cost
A firm price before we’ve inspected your slab would be misleading. What decides the number is the condition of what’s already on the concrete, not just the square footage. Our Country Club Road job needed full epoxy removal across 707 square feet plus pitting and crack repair around a floor drain. Our Kimberley Road job needed epoxy removal across 386 square feet — smaller scope, smaller price, but removal all the same.
What Moves the Price on an Ann Arbor Garage
- Removing a prior coating — both our Country Club Road and Kimberley Road projects required full epoxy removal before repair could begin.
- Working around obstacles — the floor drain at Country Club Road added time and care beyond a straightforward grind-and-coat job.
- Oil extraction — at Overridge Drive, also in Ann Arbor, oil had saturated the slab deep enough to require a dedicated petroleum-drawing compound before grinding.
| Item | Range |
|---|---|
| Professional epoxy, installed | $4.50–$8.50 per sq ft |
| Professional epoxy, typical 2-car garage | $2,000–$3,500 |
| Polyurea/polyaspartic, installed | $6–$12 per sq ft |
| Polyurea/polyaspartic, typical 2-car garage | $2,800–$5,000 |
| Difference between the two on the same garage | roughly $1,000–$1,500 |
| DIY epoxy kit, 2-car garage | $150–$650 |
| Removing a failed coating | $2–$4 per sq ft (roughly $800–$1,800 on a 2-car garage) |
| Service life, professional epoxy (SE Michigan) | 7–15 years |
| Service life, polyurea/polyaspartic (SE Michigan) | 15–20 years |
| Service life, DIY water-based kit | 1–3 years |
A “typical 2-car garage” runs 400–500 square feet. Epoxy is cheaper on day one. But both Ann Arbor jobs above started as epoxy installations, and both ended with a removal bill the homeowner didn’t plan for the first time around. Day-one savings and lifetime cost are not the same comparison.
Michigan Conditions
An Ann Arbor garage floor goes through freeze-thaw cycling every winter, road salt tracked in on tires and boots, and UV exposure at the apron. Epoxy performs well in a climate-controlled interior industrial floor with no UV and no freeze-thaw — that is where most of its track record comes from. An attached, unheated Ann Arbor garage is a different environment, and it is where the failures we document — adhesion loss at control joints, cracking that telegraphs through the coating, and staining that soaks past a worn film — tend to show up on schedule.
FAQ
A 20×20 garage is 400 square feet, within the typical 2-car garage range. Professional epoxy runs $4.50–$8.50 per square foot installed, or roughly $2,000–$3,500 total — before accounting for what’s already on the slab. On our Kimberley Road project in Ann Arbor, a 386-square-foot garage needed the existing epoxy coating fully stripped before any new coating could go down, which adds real cost beyond the base square-footage rate. A DIY epoxy kit runs $150–$650 for a 2-car garage but typically lasts only 1–3 years in Michigan conditions, versus 7–15 years for a professional installation.
A typical 2-car garage in the Detroit metro runs 400–500 square feet. Professional epoxy costs $2,000–$3,500 installed; polyurea-polyaspartic runs $2,800–$5,000 — a difference of roughly $1,000–$1,500 on the same garage. The final number depends on slab condition, not just square footage. Our Country Club Road project in Ann Arbor, at 707 square feet, needed a deteriorated epoxy coating stripped, pitting and cracks repaired around a floor drain, before coating could begin — a larger scope than a straightforward job of the same size.
Epoxy is a rigid coating that loses adhesion at control joints as the slab moves underneath it — exactly what we found at our Country Club Road project in Ann Arbor, where seasonal freeze-thaw cycling had accelerated cracking along the joint lines under a 707-square-foot epoxy coating. It can also lose its bond entirely with age and wear, as our crew found at our Kimberley Road project, where an epoxy coating had degraded across the full floor and had to be fully removed before a new system could bond. Professional epoxy installations in SE Michigan run 7–15 years; DIY kits typically last only 1–3 years.
For an unheated Detroit-metro garage, a polyurea-polyaspartic system rates highest for durability — 15–20 years in SE Michigan conditions versus 7–15 years for professional epoxy. It also resists the joint-line cracking that undoes rigid coatings: at our Country Club Road project in Ann Arbor, our crew bridged the control-joint cracking with semi-rigid filler and flooded the surrounding pitting with Mender epoxy before coating over it. The trade-off is cost: polyaspartic runs $6–$12 per square foot installed against $4.50–$8.50 for epoxy, and it requires a trained crew rather than a DIY kit.
See the Full Installations
Both projects are documented in full, with before-and-after photos, on our Ann Arbor garage floor coating page — see the full Country Club Road and Kimberley Road installations.
Compare Coatings in Nearby Cities
The same comparison, worked through with garages documented in neighbouring cities:
- Coating a garage floor in Plymouth: epoxy or polyaspartic?
- Coating a garage floor in Livonia: epoxy or polyaspartic?
For the metro-wide picture — cost ranges, service life, and how each material handles a Michigan winter — see epoxy garage floor coating compared with polyurea-polyaspartic across Metro Detroit.
Get a Quote for Your Ann Arbor Garage
Every price on this page is a market range, not a quote. What your project costs depends on what’s actually on your slab. Call 248-613-5888 for a free inspection and an accurate number.
MotorCity Floors and Coatings
46101 Grand River Ave, Novi, MI 48374
248-613-5888 · [email protected]
