Mid-City
Around Canal Street and Carrollton Avenue, near City Park. The Canal streetcar runs through it, and Bayou St. John is nearby. Many homes here are raised shotguns and doubles, and many were renovated after 2005.
Where the coating fits in a renovation
A floor coating goes in near the end, after the messy trades are done and before furniture and fixtures arrive. Coat too early and drywall mud, paint, and dragged ladders scar the new finish. Coat too late and baseboards and cabinets have to be protected or pulled. A good sequence looks like this:
- Concrete repairs and any leveling done while the space is still a construction site.
- Walls finished and painted; heavy trades out.
- Slab ground, moisture-tested, and coated.
- Cure, then baseboards, fixtures, and furniture.
Moisture in a ground-floor room
Moisture in a slab can make a floor coating fail after it goes down, which is why coating makers generally require a moisture test first. A slab inside a room is still a slab on the ground. Once it is covered in a coating, any vapor coming through has nowhere to go but the bond line. Ask for the reading and the primer it calls for before the color conversation starts.
Finishes that read as a room
- Solid color with a satin topcoat — clean, modern, easy to mop.
- Metallic epoxy — about $9 to $15 or more per square foot, or $3,000 to $5,000 for a small room. Every floor is different.
- Custom flake — forgiving of an older, repaired slab, in colors that do not look like a garage.
The metallic and decorative epoxy page explains what to expect from a poured floor.
Small garages and patios
A one-car garage or a rear slab is a small job, and small jobs hit a floor of about $400 to $700 because setup costs the same either way. Outdoor slabs are better served by a sealer or an overlay than by a garage system.
Storefronts
Retail and restaurant spaces being fitted out need the floor finished before fixtures go in, and often on a tight lease schedule. A kitchen needs urethane cement where hot water hits the floor; a dining or retail area can take flake or solid epoxy. Small commercial floors run about $6 to $12 per square foot.
Living with a coated floor indoors
An interior coated floor is low-maintenance, not no-maintenance. Put felt pads under chairs and tables, a mat at each exterior door, and clean with a damp mop and a pH-neutral cleaner. Rolling office chairs do best on a chair mat. A worn topcoat can be renewed years later without redoing the color coats underneath.
Permits. Mid-City is in Orleans Parish. Whether a floor coating job needs a permit is a question for your city or parish permit office — for the parish, the Orleans Parish permit office — and for the installer, who should know before quoting.
Other neighborhoods: Lakeview and Uptown. Every area by parish is on the service areas page.