Garages are often one of the neglected rooms in a house, especially because they typically only used for storage. But finishing up and emptying the garage in advance of putting the house on the market can give you a great opportunity. Make the garage more of a selling point than either a room that everyone ignores or, even worse, a distracting element. Here’s how:
Go through the collected clutter.
There should be nothing in the garage beside some nice-looking shelves and maybe a tool or two, even if the previous renters left a mountain of things behind. Not only can an organized, smaller pile of stuff help make a garage look more appealing than before, it also gives you more options for fast sales: if a buyer is willing to meet your first price but needs the house immediately, then having already gone through the garage makes the move that much easier and makes the deal possible to accept.
Empty the garage so you can finish it up.
Garages are unfinished rooms. The concrete is bare (and potentially dotted with chemical stains, paint, and car grease), and potential buyers can see every hairline crack, crumbling corner, or gap. Once the floor is cleared, seal it with a protective floor coating that makes the floor stronger and the whole space more of a feature. You can also add baseboards to seal the gap between the walls and the floor, which let cold air in and out of the house until you seal them.
Decluttering the garage should be one of the first things you do between renters. Not only does it reduce the amount of stuff you need to haul offsite later, it’s an all-inclusive opportunity to reorganize, clean, and renovate the room. New renters don’t want to know what others have left behind because it gives them a negative impression of the house’s history. You also want to make every corner of the house look like a blank slate that’s ready for renters to make their own. It’s even more important to make the room look finished and well-protected.
A new floor coating can do precisely that, especially if you bring in a team of quick professionals.
When you decide to get your concrete floors stained, there’s a lot of prep work before the first layer even goes down. But the acid stains you can buy in stores don’t come with concrete filler, years of experience, or strong cleaners. So find a company that can do it all, including:
Identify cracks and weak spots in the flooring.
It’s not just your garage’s concrete floor that can develop crumbled edges and hairline cracks. These blemishes can appear anywhere in your home, but professional acid-staining companies know how to take care of them before applying the stain. The problem can be even worse if you have carpet floors because the tacks are nailed to the floor and can cause a bit of damage when they’re removed. Instead of trying to repair your floors yourself or risk missing developing weaknesses, get a guarantee.
Pull out stains that can interfere with the finished appearance.
Stains aren’t necessarily opaque. While deep, solid colors of stain and tile patterns can look like a solid layer of color over the previous surface, the underlying colors still influence the final design. This is even truer if you are layering semi-transparent acid stains for a beautiful, variegated look. Experts finishers can pull old stains out of your concrete. Once they pull up the carpet or tile, you’ll be surprised by the old paint stains, footprints, and blotches from your house’s construction. If you hire professionals to prepare the floor and apply the stain, they can stop it from being an unpleasant surprise.
Test the coloring and concrete.
Different concrete slabs respond differently to acid stains and dyes. If you have an older home, that concrete may have lost many of the minerals that influence the final color of the finish. While natural variation is a key benefit of acid-staining your concrete, older slabs may look entirely different from your color samples or new concrete surfaces around your home’s exterior. Professionals can inspect your concrete ahead of time and let you know what to expect based on its age and the environment.
Staining a concrete floor doesn’t start with the stain. Go to PolyTek Surface Coatings here to see our gallery and get a quote so you can put the property on the market.