floor finishes, garage/shop

Tony you have a great excuse - even if you drove the AMX here, well....... frankly I'd enjoy having you as well as others here. I really would. I also think it would help me mentally after the last few weeks, and especially after this last week after what I've learned. 

Thanks for asking - and also - funny you should ask (timing)    I just grabbed the card from the camera to get a couple of pictures put up.

I almost made deadline. Recall they wanted to start a day early if possible. I was up until almost midnight getting things out of the shop. I never got the other 3 lights replaced, and didn't get all the cleaning done that I had wanted to do. After the building was done I went around the entire perimeter of the inside and "caulked" between floor and steel wall to seal the place where the walls almost meet the floor - help keep things a bit neater, prevent bugs from coming in that way, just sort of seal it up a bit more. I used mostly silicon based caulk. It held like crazy in some spots, not well at all in others but looking back I used whatever I had on hand, then bought stuff on sale and it was a mix of probably 4 different caulking and silicon products. Also some transmission fluid had leaked out of some transmissions I had on the shelves as well as the transfer cases I had stored on shelves. When the west floor settled, then was raised again, that broke the bond between that caulking and walls/floor, the other side I had used very good product that stuck like a beast to concrete and walls. Anyway, they were going to put the new floor "up to the silicon" caulking joint. I said no, I'll remove that sealer, I want the finish to go to the walls, not stop 1/8 to 1/4" short and end at silicon.
So I went home yesterday morning and helped them get connected to my 50 amp 220 in the shop (we had to hard-wire their equipment as they couldn't figure out how to make an adapter for my welding outlet and get their equipment to work. That's ok as it's sort of strange since run an oven and an antique welder on that particular circuit and it's wired differently)
While I was there, I dug through the covered stuff, found my gasket scrapers, a "Stanley knife" and a razor blade and proceeded to remove all that old silicon caulk. Some came off ok, some not so ok. I have a #@$% of a big blister on the palm of my left hand. It took me 2 hours to go around the entire floor perimeter and dig out and scrape off that old silicon caulk. I didn't do under the stairs or in the "closet" formed by the stairs landing to the upstairs. That will be all buried in parts storage anyway and the air compressor, jacks, stands and engine stand sit under the stairs, that's just storage and you can't see most of the floor back there anyway. But I did get the rest done!! Wow, almost 30' of south wall, 36' of west wall, 15' or so of east wall, and because of the two overhead doors, only about 6' of north wall.
When I got home and looked last night I see they did go all the way up to the walls with the first coat and the quartz broadcast.

In 1 or 2 of the photo you may notice where I got creative - I didn't want them to have to go around too many things, so I removed one of the braces I had put in place to support the middle of the lower half of the stairway going up, but also I raised the bottom part of the stairs. I removed 2 of the screws that hold the wall panels to the framing, put in two heavier construction screws about 3" long running them through a chain then into the wall. I made a 5 or 6" loop in the chain, one of the screws running through each end of the loop into the wall/framing. I then used my "come-along" with one hook hooked to the chain loop on the wall up high, the other end hooked to the bottom of the stairs, and cranked a bit, lifting the bottom of the stairs an inch or so so that they could get under at least those areas and not go around the center and outboard supports at the bottom end of the stairs. You may detect that in the photos and see how the stairs no longer rest on the floor. At the wall they are bolted to the wall with lags so can't be moved, but they "gave" just enough to do this.
What you see on the floor is quartz.

Overview of empty shop. It took DAYS to haul tons, and I mean literally tons, of parts, transmissions, engines, transfer cases, differentials, tools and equipment. This also shows the infrared heating and some of the new lights on the right or west side.



Looking at the northwest corner from the west. Doors were left open a tiny bit as the floor coat goes under about half-way. I've not seen this corner so clean in years! This is where the electric, phone, Ethernet network cable, enters and where the terminal board is. The powder coating oven normally sits in this corner also, due to the proximity of the electric.  The reddish box near the ceiling, between the doors, with the 30' tube extending out to the left/south is the heat.



Looking to the SW, an overview...........



I wasn't able to enter so held the camera inside the door and snapped, caught a view looking south to the stairs. Note they don't touch the floor. You can just see the 'come-along'.



Better over-all view looking SW



Looking down to the west.

Looking good you may need sun glasses in there when your done