Cleaning then painting garage floor but brick mortar in walls releasing sand

[Jillie1]

showing some marks i'm want to maskshows cracks in cememtshows where mortar/sand is leakinganother example of mortar- sandsize of cracks in cement, measure tape for scale

Garage floor needs a refresher as 20 years of various oil, 'rust' marks, grime etc.  Have so far only washed with mop and tried removing oil stains without much luck.  I see the preparation products offered for cleaning and making it suitable to absorb paint but worried that as the brick walls are releasing sand from mortar, if I use a gurney or any effort to clean where wall meets floor, i'm just releasing more sand so is damaging to walls and will put grit into the paint.  Any tips?  I thought of sticking heaving masking tape along the walls but it will still release more mortar when i remove it.

Also, there are some small cracks in the concrete as am on a hill and have very slight subsidence in the land, should I try to fill them with something before painting? 

Also, I want it to be non-slip paint, as want it safe for me as possible.

Also what colour options are there, to disguise the concrete cracks and oil stains.

I want to avoid a lot of physical scrubbing as not getting any younger!

Thanks very much for any help you can give,  Jillie.

[MitchellMc]

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community @Jillie1. It's great to have you join us and many thanks for your questions.

I believe your brick mortar is affected by fretting. It is caused when cement joints become damp or where a badly mixed batch of mortar was used during construction. The only way I am aware of fixing the issue is for the damaged mortar to be cut out and replaced. This is an extensive and time-consuming job. In order to paint the floor, you could use UNi-PRO 550mm x 25m Unimask Film With Masking Tape Refill to cover the walls until the paint has dried on the floor.

You might like to use Gripset Betta 1L Concrete Crack Filler to fill those cracks prior to painting. Here are two step-by-step D.I.Y. tutorials on How to paint concrete floors and How to apply epoxy to a garage floor which I trust you'll find helpful.

We have a variety of paints suitable for your garage floor such as the Berger Jet Dry Heavy Duty range. You can add the Berger Jet Dry 120g Clear True Grip to the paint to reduce the likelihood of slipping.

A few discussions you might like to read through are-

• Preparation for painting concrete with cracks and old flaked paint  by @FrankC

• Epoxy garage floor project by @maknilsin

• Prepare and paint my garage floor by @Goldy

Let me also mention @Walzz, @Stuardo, @Brad and @JDE to see if they would like to join the conversation and to see if they had some advice on the deteriorating mortar.

Please let me know if you need further assistance or had any questions.

Mitchell

[Brad]

Mortar can be taken back to where it is solid or a minimum of 12mm and replaced with new.

+1 to Berger Jet Dry.