Removing paint from concrete floor

I have an indoor concrete slab surface in a "mud room" between the house & garage, which was painted white by my father years ago. I have no idea what kind of paint he used. Paint almost immediately began to blister in places, is pretty much totally gone in the cross-room traffic path, and is patchy elsewhere. Trouble is, SOME of the paint seems to adhere well, while the spot right next to it can be scratched up easily (I was hoping the whole mess would come up easily with a 4" razor scraper, no such luck). I'd like to remove all of it to have a good surface to either paint or glue down a vinyl floor. What would be ideal would be if there were a relatively safe stripper I could apply to the floor then suck the whole mess up with my shop vac, but I'm guessing that would be too easy to be true. Any idea on the best way to deal with this mess? It really looks like hell now, & I'm afraid it's not stable enough for another covering to remain down in the long run. I'd REALLY like to repaint it if possible.

TIA

Dan

Reply to
Dan
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You can strip it sandblast or grind it. They will all be messy.

You may want to try a couple of commercial strippers and see if they work easy. One cheap stripper can be made from corn starch, water and lye. Like most paint strippers, it can be nasty and you MUST protect your eyes and I would want good ventilation, but it is not as bad as some of the commercial strippers and it is cheap. I did a whole three story brick home that way.

You seem to be on the right track of thinking things through before you start which is good. Keep in mind that clean up can be bigger than the actual removal. Think about it and do a small test. (BTW after stripping all the paint off (got almost all of it and that was before the days of power washers, all I had was a hose) I had to sand blast to remove the dirt that was under the paint. Sand blasting would not work on the paint because it was thick and rubbery and if I had enough pressure to cut through it, it also cut through the brick.

Good Luck

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

Reply to
Dave

Years ago I had a formula. I was afraid someone was going to ask that. I will try and look it up.

Reply to
Joseph Meehan

I'd scrape/power-wash it down to get off the loose stuff. Wait a few months and then try again to see if anything more came loose or if it's a case of poor preperation during the original paint job.

If the paint that's adhereing well is still adhereing well, then it's a suitable base for whatever you want to put on top of it.

If it's not adhereing well, then you're going to have to go the stripper route, as anything you put on top of it will peel with the bottom layer.

Or you can do the lazy route, clean it and repaint it, and deal with the fact that you may need to do so again in the future.

John

Reply to
raven

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