How to Bid an Epoxy Floor Job: Step by Step, With a Two Car Garage Estimate Template

To bid an epoxy floor job, measure every surface, assess the concrete for moisture, cracks, and existing coatings, choose the prep method, work out materials from your manufacturer's coverage rates, add loaded labor hours, fuel, and equipment, allocate overhead, and then price to a target gross margin of about 50 to 60%. Check the result against the $5 to $8 per square foot most residential garages sell for, and present it as three options instead of one number.

Step 1: How do you measure a garage for an epoxy floor?

Measure the slab, not the house plans. Use a laser measure and sketch the floor on the estimate as you go.

• Main slab: length times width. Measure both walls on each side, because garages are rarely square. Use the larger number.
• Bump outs and steps: add any step landings, side bays, or storage alcoves separately.
• Stem walls: measure the linear feet of curb along the walls and its height. Most homeowners have never heard the term, which is why it is the easiest add-on in the trade. Our post on raising your average floor coating ticket explains how to present it.
• Joints and cracks: note the linear feet of control joints and cracks you will fill.
• Obstacles: drains, posts, water heaters, built-in cabinets, and anything the homeowner is not moving.

A two car garage is usually 400 to 600 square feet of usable slab, which is the range our pricing and margins breakdown uses. Photograph every wall, every crack, and the slab from the doorway. Those photos go on the quote and become your before shots.

Step 2: How do you assess the concrete before you price it?

Most coating failures trace back to prep, moisture, or product choice. Find those problems at the estimate so you price them instead of eating them on install day.

Write the moisture reading on the estimate. A number on paper protects your warranty, and the floor coating warranty guide covers how to write the exclusions around it.

Step 3: Diamond grinding or shot blasting?

Both open the concrete so the coating can bond. Your manufacturer specifies the surface profile they want, usually as a concrete surface profile (CSP) number from the International Concrete Repair Institute scale. Pick the method that hits that profile on this slab.

For a typical two car garage, diamond grinding is the default. Skip acid etching. It does not give a consistent profile, and it gives a homeowner no reason to pay more than the kit from the hardware store.

Either way, grinding concrete creates respirable crystalline silica dust. OSHA's construction standard for respirable crystalline silica, 29 CFR 1926.1153, lists walk-behind milling machines and floor grinders and handheld grinders in its Table 1 of control methods. Read the requirements for the equipment you run, and see OSHA's silica guidance for construction. Dust control is a cost line on every bid, not optional gear.

Step 4: How do you calculate materials?

Use the manufacturer's numbers, not ours. Every product has a technical data sheet that lists the coverage rate at a given thickness, and those rates differ by product, by the profile you ground, and by how porous the slab is.

The math is the same for every coat:

Gallons needed = square feet ÷ coverage rate per gallon (from the data sheet) × (1 + waste factor)

For the worked example below, we used placeholder coverage rates purely to show the arithmetic. Check your manufacturer's data sheet for real numbers.

Then add what people forget: tooling wear, crack filler, patch, tape, rollers, squeegees, and solvent. On a 500 square foot flake and polyaspartic garage, all-in materials typically land around $450 to $900, which is about 15 to 25% of a $3,500 sale.

Step 5: How many labor hours should you bid?

Bid hours, not days. A trained two person crew on a one day system can finish a standard two car garage in a single long day, but the hours change with the slab.

An example schedule for the worked garage below:

Multiply labor hours by your fully loaded rate: wages plus payroll taxes, workers' comp, and any benefits. The example uses $40 an hour loaded, which puts one day of a two person crew at $800, inside the $600 to $900 range in our pricing and margins breakdown. Use your own rate.

If the slab has an old coating, heavy oil, or a moisture primer, add the hours. If the system needs an overnight cure, add the second trip. Pure epoxy systems usually need one, which is why one crew's weekly capacity drops on epoxy work.

Step 6: How do you add overhead?

Overhead is everything the business pays whether or not the crew works today: insurance, truck and trailer payments, equipment payments, software, phone, the shop, office help, and the owner's salary if it is not in labor. Marketing is overhead too, and it belongs in every bid.

Overhead per job = monthly overhead ÷ jobs you install per month

For the example, we used $7,000 of monthly overhead spread across 14 jobs a month (one crew inside the 12 to 16 floors a month range), which is $500 a job. For marketing, figure what it costs you to sell one job: your cost per estimate divided by your close rate. The example uses $400 per sold job as a placeholder. Plug in your own numbers. If you do not know them, that is the first thing to fix.

Step 7: How do you set the price and the margin?

Price to a target gross margin, then check it against the market.

Price = direct cost ÷ (1 minus target gross margin)

At a 55% gross margin, price = direct cost ÷ 0.45. That is a markup of about 122%. Contractors who mark up costs by 50% and think they are making 50% are actually running a gross margin of about 33%, which is how good crews end up broke.

Then check the number against the market. Our floor coating benchmarks put residential garage coating at $5 to $8 per square foot, closer to $5 in saturated markets like much of Florida and closer to $8 in wealthier, less crowded metros. If your cost-based price lands far above that, look at your hours and overhead. If it lands far below, you are leaving money on the table.

Worked example: a two car garage estimate template

The garage: 22 by 22 feet, 484 square feet of slab, 62 linear feet of stem wall at 6 inches tall, about 30 linear feet of hairline cracks, no existing coating, and a moisture reading inside the manufacturer's limit. The homeowner wants the middle option: an epoxy base, full flake, and a polyaspartic topcoat, with stem walls.

These are illustration numbers, not a client's job. Copy the table and replace every number with your own.

The cost-based price ($3,756) and the market-based price ($3,760) land within a few dollars of each other. That is what a healthy bid looks like. When the two numbers are far apart, one of your inputs is wrong.

How do you present good, better, and best?

One price gives the homeowner a yes or no. Three options give them a choice between your options. Use the system tiers from our pricing and margins breakdown, applied to the same 484 square foot garage:

Show all three on one page, explain the real difference between them (durability, UV stability, install time, warranty), and recommend one. "If this were my garage, I would do the middle one, and here is why." Keep the good option honest. It should be a floor you are proud of, not a trap.

Discounting is where bids go to die. Dropping a $3,500 garage to $2,500 cuts gross profit roughly in half while the work stays exactly the same. If price is the problem, move the homeowner to a different option instead of cutting the one they want. How to close more floor coating estimates covers the rest of the kitchen table conversation, and following up on unsold estimates covers what to do when they do not sign that day.

What are the most common bidding mistakes?

• Quoting square footage over the phone. You have not seen the slab. A price without the moisture reading and the crack count is a guess.
• Using someone else's coverage rates. Coverage depends on your product, your profile, and the slab. Use the data sheet.
• Leaving out overhead and marketing. A job can show a healthy gross margin and still lose money once the truck payment and the leads are paid.
• Confusing markup with margin. A 50% markup is a 33% margin.

Frequently asked questions

Bid with confidence when the calendar is full

The best bid in the world does not help if you are not standing in enough garages to give it. Appointly Solutions books qualified floor coating estimates for contractors: we run the Meta ads, text and call every homeowner within one minute, qualify them, and put the estimate on your calendar for $125 to $175 per booked estimate, plus ad spend you fund at cost. No setup fee, no retainer, one floor coating contractor per market.

If you want more garages to bid on, book a strategy call and we will check whether your market is open.