Easily Renew Your Ugly Concrete Driveway or Garage Floor

Posted on Jan 10, 2021

Your concrete driveway or garage floor will get ugly over time. There are many reasons for this such as

• oil or acid stains
• natural discoloration
• new, adjacent slabs of concrete that have a different shade of gray

Fortunately, you can easily cover up the non-uniformity of colors with any one of the following products:

• Behr Granite Grip
• Behr Concrete Dye

I tried each of these on my driveway to cover up some stains to make the cement look new and uniform.

Concrete Dye

The concrete dye color I chose was silver gray which is the color of new cement. Below is a picture of a test application. The dye is a stain so it doesn’t cover stains as well as the Granite Grip but it still a big improvement.

Granite Grip

The Granite Grip is a colored and textured adhesive which completely covers stains. Since it’s an adhesive, you must apply it with an adhesive roller instead of a standard paint roller. The gray Granite Grip is a bit too dark but the tan Granite Grip looks perfect.

WARNING: Once you apply this stuff to your concrete, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get off, which is a good if you like the end result but bad if you don’t.

Granite Grip Application Instructions

For the Granite Grip, I tried following the instructions on the can which were to use a paint tray and a 1/4″ nap epoxy roller. That

1. took forever
2. produced uneven results with many streaks
3. was very tiring
4. used more Granite Grip than necessary
5. wasted expensive Granite Grip

because it would dry up in the paint tray making it impossible to continue. Home Depot / Behr should just replace the instructions with the following:

1. Use a texture sprayer with a ~4mm nozzle. I got mine from Harbor Freight for $30.
2. Hook it up to an air compressor. I got the Rolair JC-10 Plus because I hate noisy machines.
3. Pour the Granite Grip in the hopper
4. Turn on the air compressor. I set the pressure to 75 psi. If you have a bleeder type texture spray gun, like mine, then air will continuously flow out the nozzle even before pulling the trigger. This is by design but wastes compressed air. Therefore, I attached an air valve to the sprayer so I could turn the air on and off at the spray gun.
5. Spray in 4 ft x 4 ft sections then roll using a 1/4″ nap epoxy roller to even out the Granite Grip. No need to roll hard. Just even out the material as much as possible.

This method is

1. much faster
2. produces even and professional results
3. isn’t tiring
4. doesn’t waste expensive Granite Grip

Don’t even bother wasting your time and money rolling Granite Grip on without a texture sprayer. Use of a texture sprayer should be the only way to apply Granite Grip. Get professional results in less time and effort.

Here’s a video of me spraying and rolling the Granite Grip

Sunny Day Warning

Don’t apply Granite Grip on a hot day in direct sunlight! The Granite Grip will dry quickly making it difficult to roll and even out. Also, it’ll dry on the roller resulting in clumps that get transferred to the ground. If it’s always sunny, work in a shade, e.g. using a patio umbrella.

Prepare the Surface

Make sure you prepare your surface before applying Granite Grip. The surface needs to be rough like medium grit sandpaper and be able to absorb water relatively quickly. Behr’s instructions are to use Behr Degreaser / Cleaner and Etcher. The etcher uses Muriatic acid which is a strong chemical. If you get any on your skin, your skin will become rough. I tried this method but it’s not only dangerous because of the chemicals, you have to scrub manually which is tiring. It also has a strong chemical smell. On top of that, if you don’t wash the solution away completely, which is hard to do, it’ll leave white blemishes on the floor. Unhappy with the effort, risk, and results, I rented the Diamabrush Concrete Prep tool attachment along with a floor drum-style polisher from The Home Depot. At $145 for 4 hours, it’s much more expensive than a bottle of cleaner and etcher. But, it literally sands the floor thereby removing any old stains and making it evenly rough. The tool attachment has flaps or tabs with a rough diamond surface so it can scrape away the top layer of dirty concrete similar to how you’d sand wood with rough sand paper.

You can use the tool on a dry or wet floor. If dry, it will produce a lot of dust. If you spray some water on your floor before using it, there will be no dust but instead some mud which is a mixture of water with scraped concrete. Ideally you would then rinse the floor using a pressure washer. If necessary, use a large squeegee to quickly push / pull water away from the work area for quicker drying.

Granite Grip results in a very rough, sandy surface so it’s good for traction. But, if it gets dirty, it can be hard to clean. Rustoleum 2-part EpoxyShield, on the other hand, dries to a smooth surface so if it gets dirty, it may be easier to clean. It’s also much easier to apply since you can just roll it on the cement. The chips / flakes are optional.