Dork alert: Organization is one of my favorite pastimes.

Could it be some of my childhood OCD reemerging? Perhaps! Ha! But honestly, there’s little I love more than making our spaces a little more organized, effective and clean.

Remember the Great Clean-Out of 2020?! I’ve been on a minimizing, purging and organization tear ever since. It keeps a girl going… what can I say.

Recently I had the opportunity to organize and upgrade a space in our house we hadn’t addressed much before—our garage.

I was approached by Hello Garage, a company that specializes in garage organization, floor coating and storage, to help show a great Before and After situation. I jumped at the chance because, while we do have the junk that’s in our garage organized, what we didn’t have was a good floor surface.

Check out these Before pictures and you’ll see what I mean:

That’s a lot of grease and grime, tire tracks and uneven concrete. In addition to being an eyesore, it was difficult to clean and most of all didn’t match the aesthetic of the rest of the house.

I was really looking forward to get this space into shape, so Hello Garage got in touch and we got started right away.

What is Hello Garage?

Like I said, Hello Garage specializes not only in garage floor coatings, but also organization and storage.

Their team is a one-stop shop to organize and clean out your garage space.

Our garage over the years had become the landing spot for everything but cars—tons of bikes, strollers, scooters, balls and sports equipment, shoes, and pretty much anything else activity-related that needed to be near the outside.

Andrew found a great organization system to take care of decluttering the space itself, but the floor remained a real mess—always dirty and dingy looking and stained with a ton of grime.

Needless to say, I was super excited to work with Hello Garage to finally tackle this space.

Why Use Hello Garage over Other Services?

Hello Garage uses a different material than what many other companies use.

They use what’s called a polyaspartic covering, which they claim is more flexible, durable, and resistant to cracking than epoxy—the traditional garage floor covering—over time.

Here’s the problem with epoxy. Because it’s so stiff, if you were to drop something on it that cracked the surface, it could let in moisture that could in turn cause it to break off from the concrete below.

Hello Garage’s polyaspartic covering, they say, is more flexible, is UV resistant, bonds better to concrete and is non-peeling.

I didn’t realize this, but epoxy floors can actually peel off when you park a car with hot tires on it. Andrew actually just showed me this the other day at another garage, and I was shocked! Living in Florida, we are constantly dealing with hot temperatures, so I can’t have a garage surface that’s going to literally break apart when I park on it.

The Hello Garage Process

The Consultation

The team came out and checked out our space, and we talked first about why polyaspartic coverings can be a better option than epoxy. Check out this page to get more details, but it was good to know why they prefer this material, and to understand how to care for it after installation.

We walked the space and then picked out our color, or what they call the “fleck.” This is a blend of a few colors of soft pliable pieces of polymer that are mixed together to give that mosaic-style multicolor look that you see in the pictures. Check out all the options here. We went with “Cotton Candy.”

From a design perspective, I loved having this choice. I was able to pick out a color that went well with our garage paint and overall house color palette. On top of that, the blend of multiple colors helps to draw the eye away from any imperfections and just overall looks great.

The Makeover

First the team sanded down the concrete to even the surface. Next came the adhesive. They apply this glue evenly to the smoothed-down floor, then immediately follow it up by throwing on the “fleck” in the color palette you choose. After evening that out, they apply the clear glaze and let it set.

The whole process should take about a day. We had a minor delay in our process so the team could get the fleck application just right, and I really appreciate that they didn’t settle until it was done perfectly.

You’re told to stay off the surface for two days, and then you should be good to park again!

Step 1: Buffing and Evening the Concrete

Step 2: Applying the Adhesive

Step 3: Applying the Fleck and Clear Gloss

Honest Review and Thoughts on Hello Garage

Let’s get into the details of what I thought about our Hello Garage experience.

Here are a few things I noticed about our new floor in the first few weeks of having it done:

The Pluses:

• A shiny, attractive surface: There’s something that’s really nice about having a neater look to our garage. I pull in now and love seeing the even, color coordinated surface.

• The “cure time” is relatively quick: Our crew finished up the job on a Wednesday, and by Friday morning we could park in our garage again.

• A glossy, super smooth look: Again, back to the aesthetics. I love that the surface is shiny and helps the garage to look “done.” It feels more like a room and less like a storage space when it looks this good. It looks this smooth because the material is thin—almost like water—so it actually gets into the crevices, actually bonding to the concrete below.

• Durability: It’s only been a couple weeks, but Hello Garage has told me that this material will remain as strong and durable as it looks right now. Nice to know we won’t have to worry about refinishing our floors ever again.

• Easy to clean: It’s so much easier to sweep the floor clean and even wash it down with water now that the surface is even and covered in something durable.

The Minuses:

• This might be minor to some, but the smell is pretty intense. They did tape off the door into our house so the smell was minimal indoors, but when you go into the garage itself even after it’s done, the smell is still pretty strong. Leave your garage doors open as much as you can the first week or two to help air it out.

• The dust and loose fleck. Our team was incredible at cleaning up the dust that blew around from the sanding, but inevitably some dust will get into small spaces. For us, it got on some sports equipment and strollers that were stored on the garage walls. Nothing we couldn’t wipe off and certainly not a factor that would prevent me from doing this again, but still worth mentioning.

  If I were to advise anyone going through this, I would request tarps to cover items you don’t want to get dusty. Also, we ended up with a little “fleck”—those little colored pieces—in our shoes that were stored in the garage. Again, hardly a big deal, but I would have taken those out first had I known that it would get in there.

Overall Thoughts on Our Hello Garage Floor

I really love our new floor.

It looks great and I have confidence it will last for years. It’s also good knowing that Hello Garage offers support and service should you have any issues with the product.

Although we didn’t have a need for garage organization, I would suggest if this as an extra step if you need to get your clutter organized. They have easily-installed solutions to store things like bikes, strollers, sports gear, shoes and more, that they can install at the same time they do the floor.

You also get a 10% discount if you book both the garage floor and organization services at the same time. Love a deal!

Final Results

Here are the official After pictures!

I now love looking at our garage when the doors are open. The grease-stained floors are gone, the walls are organized, and we can finally, finally use the garage for what it was meant for—parking cars. Haha.

If you have any questions or want to know more, DM me!

A huge thank you to Hello Garage for providing this service to me for free in exchange for my honest opinion and thoughts. I would absolutely recommend this service to any homeowner.

For more on Hello Garage, check them out online, and book your free consultation!