Garage, basement and commercial floors opened with a diamond grinder, moisture-tested in writing and coated to a named thickness.
Des Plaines Epoxy Flooring brings more than 20 years of epoxy flooring work to homes and businesses in Des Plaines, IL, coating garage floors, basements, decorative interiors and commercial and industrial slabs. Every system we install starts the same way: the concrete is opened with a diamond grinder or a shot blaster, the slab is tested for moisture, and the proposal names exactly what goes down.
Our residential work centers on garages and basements, which suits a city where most houses have a basement and many garages stand detached behind the house. Commercial work runs from air freight and food distribution floors near the airport to restaurant kitchens, labs and showrooms, phased so the building keeps working.
We would rather tell you a slab needs repair, drying or a different system than sell a coating that peels in its second winter. That is the thread running through everything below.
What we do
Ground, tested and coated epoxy flooring for Des Plaines homes and businesses
Ground, moisture-tested epoxy garage floors with flake and polyaspartic topcoats built to take Chicago-area road salt.
Diamond-ground, densified polished concrete for warehouses, showrooms, offices and basements, finished to cream, salt-and-pepper or full aggregate.
Fast-curing, UV-stable polyaspartic coatings over diamond-ground concrete for garages, basements, showrooms and busy commercial floors.
Moisture-tested basement floor epoxy for river-town homes, with crack repair, mitigation primers and honest advice on flood history first.
Marbled metallic epoxy floors for basements, showrooms, offices and garages, poured over carefully ground and patched concrete.
Diamond grinding and shot blasting that strip old coatings, mastic and sealers and leave concrete at the profile a new coating needs.
Crack, spall, joint and surface repair for garage, basement and commercial slabs, with a straight answer when a floor needs replacing.
Seamless commercial epoxy floors for retail, offices, auto shops, clinics and schools, installed in phases so the business keeps running.
Static-dissipative and conductive epoxy floors with grounding points and resistance testing for electronics, labs, data rooms and cleanrooms.
Full-broadcast vinyl flake epoxy floors in your choice of blend and chip size, sealed under a clear topcoat for garages, basements and shops.
Thick, impact- and chemical-resistant epoxy and urethane systems for warehouses, freight terminals and plants, installed around your shifts.
Urethane cement and epoxy kitchen floors with integral cove base and slip-resistant texture, installed around restaurant and hotel service hours.
We have been grinding, repairing and coating concrete floors for more than 20 years. That time is what lets us read a slab before quoting it: the dusty surface that will not hold a coating, the crack that keeps moving, the basement corner where moisture shows first. Experience is worth little unless it changes the scope, and on our jobs it does.
Every slab we coat is opened by diamond grinding or shot blasting to a measured concrete surface profile, so the epoxy has real texture to grip rather than relying on an acid etch that leaves residue and an uneven profile behind.
No price is final until a moisture test is written into the scope, using ASTM F2170 relative humidity probes or ASTM F1869 calcium chloride tests, so vapor in a Des Plaines basement or garage slab is found before it lifts a coating rather than after.
Our garage coatings are chosen to hold up to the brine and rock salt that ride in on tires through a Chicago-area winter, so the finish keeps its bond and color rather than pitting and staining around the parking spots by March.
Never do we sell a floor coating as waterproofing on a river-town basement. Where water has come in from the Des Plaines River or a sewer backup, the drain, the backwater valve and the drying come first, so the coating is not hiding a problem it cannot fix.
Each written proposal names the product line, the number of coats and the finished thickness, so the installed epoxy floor can be checked against the quote rather than taken on trust after the crew has left.
A garage job starts with a walk-through and a moisture test, then crack and spall repair, diamond grinding, a base coat, a broadcast if the system calls for one, and a topcoat. We schedule cure time before you park on it based on slab temperature, so the first tire on the floor does not lift a soft coating.
Many Des Plaines garages stand on their own behind the house, often on a gravel base. We stage equipment and materials so the driveway and the neighbors stay open, run grinders with vacuums attached at the machine, and keep dust out of the alley rather than rinsing it toward a drain.
A coating rolled over old sealer or garage paint is bonded to that film, not to the concrete, and it fails when the old layer lets go. We grind every garage slab down to bare, sound concrete to the profile the product requires, which is the step that separates a floor that lasts from one that peels.
The residential code lets garage slabs go down without a vapor retarder underneath, and many older garages were built exactly that way. We test those slabs with a plastic sheet check under ASTM D4263 or with in-situ humidity probes, then choose a system or a moisture-mitigation primer to match what the readings show.
Calcium chloride and rock salt dissolve into brine that soaks into bare concrete, and freeze-thaw cycles then scale and pit the surface. A sealed, coated garage floor keeps that brine on top where it can be squeegeed out, rather than letting it work into the slab all winter.
Epoxy and polyaspartic coatings need the slab warm enough and dry enough to cure properly, and a cold slab below the dew point invites amine blush and weak bond. When an unheated garage is too cold, we schedule it for warmer weather instead of forcing a winter install.
Store kits are thin water-based coatings applied over an acid-etched slab, and they often release under hot tire pickup within a season or two. Our floors use ground concrete, 100% solids epoxy base coats, broadcast media and a polyaspartic or polyurea topcoat built to a stated thickness.
Size matters less than condition. Old coatings to remove, cracks and spalls to fill, moisture to manage, flake or quartz broadcast, and the choice of topcoat drive most of the difference between two quotes. We price after testing so the figure reflects your slab rather than an average garage.
Most coating warranties exclude failures caused by moisture vapor coming up through the slab, and many also exclude impact damage and some chemical exposure. We explain those exclusions before the job is sold so you know exactly what the warranty covers and why the moisture test matters.
A basement slab sits in the ground, so vapor moves through it in a way a garage slab often does not. Before we coat a basement floor we measure moisture with calcium chloride or relative humidity testing against the product’s limits, because a coating over a wet slab blisters and lifts.
The Des Plaines River runs along the east side of the city, and creeks cross it to the north, center and south. A slab that has been under floodwater can hold moisture, silt and contamination for a long time, so we treat any flood history as part of the basement floor assessment.
After river water or a sewer backup, the cleanup, disinfection and drying come first, and the slab has to test dry before any coating goes down. We do not coat over a basement floor that is still giving up water, because the coating would trap it and fail.
Des Plaines runs a Flood Rebate Program that reimburses 30 percent of cost, up to $2,000, for work such as overhead sewers, backwater valves and battery backup sump pumps. That drainage work protects the basement, so we recommend sorting it out before a new floor rather than after.
An epoxy floor does not stop water coming up a floor drain, through a wall crack or under hydrostatic pressure from below. We never sell a basement coating as flood protection, and we say so in writing on basement jobs where water has been a problem.
White powder on a basement floor is efflorescence, salt carried to the surface by moisture moving through the concrete. It tells us water is traveling through the slab, so we grind it off, test the floor and decide whether a moisture-mitigation system belongs under the coating.
When testing shows vapor above what a standard epoxy tolerates, a moisture-mitigation primer can be applied to the ground slab before the decorative and top coats. It is a specific product with its own limits, and we choose it from the test results rather than adding it by habit.
Basement prices move with moisture readings, the need for a mitigation primer, crack repair, the removal of old paint or tile adhesive, and the chosen finish. A dry, sound slab with a simple flake system costs far less than a damp floor that needs mitigation and repair first.
In Illinois, radon mitigation is licensed work under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. A floor coating may cover cracks, but we never sell it as radon reduction, and a household with a radon concern should talk to a licensed mitigator before the floor is coated.
A vinyl flake broadcast is thrown into the wet base coat, then sealed under a clear topcoat. Smaller chips read as a fine speckle while larger chips give a bolder pattern, and a full broadcast hides dust and small imperfections well, which is why flake is the most common garage finish we install.
Metallic epoxy uses pigments that move as the coating is worked, producing a marbled, three-dimensional look. It takes a well-ground, flat slab and a crew that controls the pour and the tooling, since every flaw in the concrete and every lap mark in the coat shows through.
Polished concrete is ground and honed through progressively finer diamonds, densified with a lithium silicate densifier and polished to the chosen sheen. How deep we grind decides how much aggregate shows, from a cream finish with almost no stone to a full exposure of the rock in the mix.
High gloss looks sharp but shows dust, footprints and tire marks quickly, while satin and matte topcoats hide everyday traffic better. We help you choose a sheen by how the room is used, since a showroom, a busy garage and a basement gym each live with their floor differently.
A quartz aggregate broadcast puts colored, angular quartz into the coating, adding texture and slip resistance in one step. It suits kitchens, locker rooms, ramps and wet areas, where grip matters and a decorative finish still has to survive heavy cleaning.
A solid color coating is the plain, workmanlike choice for shops, storage rooms and utility areas. It is easy to clean and to touch up, and in a workshop where parts get dropped it makes small screws and fittings easier to find on the floor.
Standard epoxies yellow, or amber, under ultraviolet light from open garage doors and windows. Where a floor sees sun, we finish it with a UV-stable polyaspartic or polyurea topcoat so the color stays true rather than turning yellow along the door line.
Saw-cut lines, contrasting borders and inlaid logos add design to a commercial lobby, a showroom or a home garage. We plan them with the slab’s existing control joints so the pattern and the concrete’s own movement work together.
Commercial floors carry heavier loads, harsher chemicals, stricter inspections and tighter schedules than a garage. We size the coating system to the traffic and exposure, coordinate with facility managers and phase the job so the business keeps operating while the floor is done.
Des Plaines shares its southern border with O’Hare, and air freight terminals sit along Touhy Avenue and Wille Road. Dock plates, pallet jacks and forklifts concentrate wheel loads on small contact points, so those floors need thicker, impact-resistant systems and repaired joints at the dock edge.
Warehouse racking is bolted through the slab at each upright, which fixes where the floor can and cannot be coated without disturbing anchors. We work around existing racking, or coordinate with the racking contractor on new installations, so the coating and the anchors are not fighting each other.
Food floors are washed down every shift with hot water and cleaners, and the coating has to stay sealed and slip-resistant through it. We specify systems rated for that exposure, add cove base where walls meet the floor, and add texture so a wet floor still gives grip.
The Des Plaines Building Division reviews restaurant plans with a finish schedule that includes floors, walls, ceilings and cove base details. Food Code rules call for coved floor and wall junctures in many areas, so we build an integral cove base that cleans as one piece with the floor.
Where hot water, steam cleaning, fats and harsh sanitizers would soften an epoxy, urethane cement is the better system. It tolerates thermal shock and heavy cleaning, which is why commercial kitchens and food plants often get urethane cement rather than a standard epoxy.
Labs and diagnostics manufacturing need floors that clean easily, resist reagents and may need static control. We select chemical-resistant systems and, where electronics or sensitive instruments demand it, static-dissipative and ESD flooring tested to a specified resistance range.
Illinois regulates volatile organic compounds in floor and industrial maintenance coatings under 35 Ill. Adm. Code Part 223, and those limits apply to the person applying the coating as well as the maker. We select products inside those limits so the job complies regardless of who bought the material.
When a warehouse, kitchen or lab cannot stop, we work overnight and on weekends and coat the floor in sections. Fast-cure polyaspartic topcoats help, and we plan the sequence with your operations team so each area is back in service when the shift needs it.
Des Plaines Epoxy Flooring provides epoxy-flooring throughout the greater Des Plaines area, with the same crews and the same standards on every job.
Good to know
Price follows the slab more than the square footage. Grinding off old sealer or paint, filling cracks and spalls, adding a moisture-mitigation primer and choosing a polyaspartic topcoat all move the number. We give a written figure after we have seen and tested the floor, with the product line, coat count and finished thickness named.
A typical two-car garage is ground, repaired and coated over one to two working days, depending on the system and the slab. Light foot traffic usually follows within a day and vehicles within several days, but we set those times by slab temperature and dew point on the day rather than by a fixed calendar.
Illinois has no state license for flooring or floor coating contractors. Each town sets its own contractor registration, bond and insurance rules, so we check the requirements in the municipality where the floor sits before the job is booked, and we ask the Building Division whether the work needs a permit.
A 100% solids epoxy builds a thick, hard base coat with strong bond to ground concrete. Polyaspartic and polyurea topcoats cure faster, stay more flexible and resist ultraviolet ambering better. Many of our floors use epoxy for the base and a polyaspartic topcoat, though the right pairing depends on the room and how soon it must return to service.
Often, yes, but not first. The drainage, any backwater valve or overhead sewer work, and thorough drying come before the floor. We then test the slab for moisture and decide whether a moisture-mitigation primer is needed. A coating does not stop water coming up a floor drain or through a wall.
A smooth gloss coating can be slick under water, snow melt or oil. We add grip with a vinyl flake or quartz aggregate broadcast, or with an anti-slip additive in the topcoat, and we tune the texture to how the room is used, since a garage, a pool deck and a kitchen each need different traction.
Yes, inside heated buildings and basements. An unheated detached garage in January is usually a poor candidate, because a cold slab slows the cure and raises the risk of amine blush and poor bond. We tell those customers to wait for warmer weather rather than coat into conditions the product was not made for.
Moisture coming up through the slab is the most common exclusion, which is why we test for it before quoting. Other usual exclusions include damage from impact, hot tire pickup on a floor that was not built for it, and chemicals beyond the product's rating. We go through the exclusions with you before the job is sold.
We do not roll a new coating over old paint or sealer. The old film is ground off with diamond tooling or removed by shot blasting until bare, sound concrete shows, because a new coating is only as strong as whatever it sits on, and a failing layer underneath takes the new one with it.
Yes. Warehouses, food distribution floors, labs and kitchens are phased in sections around shifts, dock schedules and service hours, with overnight and weekend windows when the building has to stay running. We plan the sequence with your operations team before the price is final.
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