Floorguard New Treatments Make The Area So Clean, You Just May Want To Move In

It glistens. That's the first thing you'll notice. The garage floor reflects light as if it had been hosed down moments ago. It reveals a texture that doesn't seem likely to allow a person to slip, should the floor actually become wet. Look at the floor of Dave and Nita Trexler's two-car garage, and you might react as one of their neighbors did. "I just walked into his garage," Colin Hunt says, "and said "Whoa." The Trexlers last fall opened a franchise of the Chicago-based Floorguard, a company that for nearly 20 years has specialized in applying permanently bonded coats to garage floors. Dave Trexler was a mechanical engineer for 15 years before he left the DuPont Co. in the early 90s and got into the dry cleaning business. He also worked with an employment agency before his attempt to improve his garage floor became the seed for a new career. Two months ago, the Trexlers used the Floorguard system on their own two-car garage. They also installed panels of Mighty Wall, the company's slatted wall system, from floor to ceiling. With its modular cabinets, drawers, workstations, shelves and baskets, their garage resembles one depicted in the parent company's brochure. Soon after their neighbor saw the garage, he enlisted the Trexlers, who handle all facets of the business, to install flooring in his garage. When Hunt and his wife bought their house about 10 years ago, the floor had been freshly painted.

"But paint does not hold up,"� he says. "You drive on it, and the heated tires blister it, and finally it peels and looks likeamess. "So, I'm a messy kind of guy anyhow, and I said, "If I had a garage that looked like this, I would never mess it up. It would always be the way I'd want to bring people into the house." To coat or otherwise protect most homeowner's to-do lists, but there is an industry built around the practice. Many home improvement stores carry epoxy products to seal a floor. Some are available as kits; some stores provide installation services. (Floor preparation "" removing previous layers of paint or sealants is an essential step before bonding a new material "" isn"�t always included in the advertised prices, so be sure to ask before committing.) Alternatives to epoxy include rollout mats or heavyduty rubber tiles that fit together like pieces of a puzzle. (GarageTek is among the most well known producers of tiles, with an array of colors and patterns "" checkered or hopscotch are among them "" available.

RaceDeck is another tile specialist.) The most significant competitor to Floorguard seems to be PremierGarage, which uses a similar process but varies somewhat during the preparation phase. PremierGarage uses grinding, acid etching or shotblasting to remove oil, grease, paint and anything else that might impede the bonding of the company's hybrid polymer to the concrete. Floorguard relies exclusively on shotblasters for garage floors. Trexler uses a machine that resembles a small snowblower, which fires thousands of tiny metallic balls at the floor, leaving behind a rough surface to which the resin can cling. Vinyl flakes, available in three grades of increasingly fine chips, are laid atop the base coat. Trexler adds sand to the sealant coat to enhance its stability. The whole process takes two days, plus another two days to cure. Hunt, the Trexlers"� 74-yearold neighbor, was so impressed that he had them do the garage floors of his nearby home, which he is selling, and the home he and his wife recently bought in Hockessin. "It's a purification of your garage,"� Hunt says. "And from there, you can carry it on to taking it back to trash, or building it up to a place that is really nice."� That purification doesn"�t come cheap "" the floor of a typical two-car garage, Trexler says, requires 10 gallons of resin and 100 pounds of vinyl flakes and costs about $2,000 to install. It's a luxury that the Trexlers know isn"�t in everyone's budget. But it carries a lifetime warranty on delamination and wear-through.

The Trexlers know the frustration and expense that ultimately comes from quicker, cheaper solutions. Trexler had used a home improvement store's kit to paint his floor and was enjoying the reactions of his friends and family. It looked great and was easy to clean, he says, but after about a year the laminate started to peel. (Hot tires can eventually lift the paint. So Trexler researched his options, keeping in mind the possible market for a franchise, and, after a trip to Floorguard's headquarters, was convinced. Their franchise's warehouse is in Newark, and although most of their business to date has been in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Trexlers expect soon to be beautifying Delaware garages. Ron Kuzick, of Radnor, Pa., had his three-car garage's floor finished Friday. When it was completed, he said to his wife, "I may just move in."� "Just think about the winter in this part of the country,"� Kuzick says, "when you bring your car in after riding through the salt and the sand and the rest of the junk. The deposits on your floor "" this, you just take the hose and wash it out. "It just turned a garage that was ratty looking into something you wouldn"�t mind having in your house."� To schedule an appointment for a consultation in counties located in southeastern Pennsylvania, please contact Dave and Nita Trexler at 302-351-4224.

About Floorguard Floorguard is the most respected and trusted name in quality, maintenance-free garage systems. Its easy-to-clean flooring, heavy-duty wall systems and finely-crafted cabinetry enable homeowners to customize their garage spaces to match their individual needs and styles. Floorguard has been at the forefront of the seamless flooring industry for almost 20 years and has developed a proprietary blend of materials and processes that result in garage flooring that continually looks beautiful and last for years, even in unfavorable weather conditions. Floorguard products have been endorsed by more than 15,000 satisfied customers and are available to customers in four metro areas nationwide, including its flagship office in Chicago, and three franchises in Delaware, Southeast Pennsylvania and South Carolina. For additional information or to learn about Floorguard's proprietary products and processes, please visit www.floorguard.com.

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