Quotes for the same Collingwood garage floor routinely arrive between $1,800 and $7,500. That is not one contractor being greedy and another being generous. They are quoting genuinely different jobs, and from the driveway the two finished floors look much the same.
Here is what the work costs and what actually moves the number.
The numbers
Full system, installed
| Scope | Typical South Georgian Bay cost |
|---|---|
| Single bay, ~250 sq ft | $2,400–$3,600 |
| Two-car bay, ~450 sq ft | $4,100–$6,300 |
| Two-car bay, oversized, ~600 sq ft | $5,400–$7,500 |
| Triple bay or shop, 900+ sq ft | $7.50–$12 / sq ft |
Per square foot, by system
| System | Rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Polyaspartic, full flake | $10–$15 | Installs cold, one-day return to service |
| Epoxy, full flake | $6–$10 | Needs a slab at ~10°C and rising |
| Solid colour, no flake | $7–$11 | Cheaper, shows every imperfection |
| Grinding and prep only | $2.50–$4 | If you are hiring the prep separately |
| Resurfacing overlay first | $4–$9 | Salt-spalled slabs, before any coating |
| Moisture-mitigating primer | $2–$4 | Only where the slab test calls for it |
Those are 2026 rates for Collingwood, The Blue Mountains, Wasaga Beach and the surrounding townships. Meaford and the far Clearview concessions carry a travel component on smaller jobs.
What actually drives the price
Four things, roughly in order of how much they move it.
1. The state of the slab
This is most of it. A clean new-build slab in one of the subdivisions south of town needs grinding and vacuuming and nothing else, and it prices at the bottom of the range. A 1970s detached garage floor off one of the older streets near the harbour, pitted and sandy from forty winters of salt, needs an overlay to get back to a coatable surface before the coating is even discussed — and that can add half the cost of the job again.
2. Whether the slab holds moisture
A slab pushing water vapour needs a mitigating primer under the system. That is $2 to $4 per square foot, and skipping it is not an option — a sealed coating over a wet slab lifts off in sheets, usually about a year later.
This is why we run a calcium chloride or in-slab RH test before quoting rather than after. It is also why a quote given over the phone is a guess: nobody can tell you whether your Wasaga Beach slab on sand with a high water table needs a primer without going and reading it.
3. Polyaspartic or epoxy
Polyaspartic is roughly 20 to 35 percent more per square foot. In an unheated garage here that premium buys you the ability to have the work done at all between October and May, plus a return to service in a day rather than a week. In a heated Thornbury workshop with a stable slab temperature it buys you considerably less, and epoxy is the better value.
4. Size
Bigger floors cost less per square foot and more in total. Mobilisation, grinding setup and dust extraction are largely fixed, so a 900 square foot shop floor in Stayner prices better per foot than a single bay in town.
Where the cheap quote comes from
A $1,800 two-car garage floor is a real product. It is not a scam. It is a different specification, and it is worth knowing exactly which corners it cuts.
| Cheap quote | Full system |
|---|---|
| Acid etch, or a light broom-clean | Diamond grind to CSP 2–3 profile |
| No slab moisture test | Calcium chloride or in-slab RH, in writing |
| Single coat, rolled | Base coat, flake, clear top coat |
| Light flake scatter | Broadcast to full rejection, scraped back |
| Control joints filled flush and coated over | Joints honoured with flexible polyurea |
| 1–2 year warranty, or none | 15 year written workmanship |
The first three rows are where failures come from. An unground floor is the single most common reason a coating lets go, because a power-trowelled slab has a hard closed surface and acid barely opens it. The coating is fine. It simply never bonded to anything.
The tell is timing: a preparation failure usually looks perfect through the first year, then starts lifting at the door where the temperature swings hardest, or peeling where the tires sit.
What we would spend money on, and what we would not
Worth it:
- The grinding. Non-negotiable, and it is most of what separates a ten-year floor from a two-year one.
- The moisture test and, if it calls for it, the primer.
- The clear top coat. It is the wear layer; the colour underneath is not.
- Anti-slip aggregate. In a region where every floor is wet with meltwater five months a year, this is a safety specification, not a finish option.
Usually not worth it:
- Metallic and marbled decorative systems in a garage. They cost 40 to 60 percent more, they are genuinely beautiful, and they show tire marks and grit far more than a flake floor. Save them for an interior space.
- The thickest available build on a residential floor. Past a point you are paying for material that a family car will never test.
- Extending a coating out onto the apron or driveway. Exterior slabs here take direct freeze-thaw and UV and are a different specification; a garage system run outside the door will fail at the transition.
The one number that decides whether to bother
If your slab is sound, coating it protects it from chloride and it will outlive the decision by decades. If your slab is already spalling through its section, a coating is money spent on something that is failing underneath it, and replacement is the honest answer.
The rough test you can do yourself: run a screwdriver across the worst area. If it scratches a line, that is normal. If it digs out loose material and keeps going, the surface has lost its section and you are into repair territory before anything else.