Garage Door Detail
Most garage slabs are poured with a recessed edge beneath the garage door to help keep water out during heavy rain. Months later, after exposure to weather, tire traffic, and driveway construction, that concrete often looks noticeably different from the surrounding surfaces. This creates a challenge when it's time to install the finishes towards the end of the project. The concrete is probably pretty ugly and doesn't match the driveway. The epoxy coating ought not be peeking out from underneath the garage door, being degraded by the sunlight.
The best way to meet challenges is with multiple options, so here's everything I've encountered.
First class, but inefficient/expensive: I've seen builders take a quick saw to right where the garage door meets the concrete and completely remove the section of the structural slab that sticks out from underneath that door to bring the pavers all the way up to the interior garage finish.
My least favorite option: A lot of guys just take the garage coating out to where it meets the pavers, so it's peeking out from underneath that door.
More efficient, nearly as classy as the first option: Before you start prepping the interior epoxy floor, create a saw cut right where the door meets the concrete so that you can cleanly terminate the epoxy at the saw cut. Then install a cement-based overlay, color-matched to the pavers, over that little apron peeking out. I think FirmeCrete makes the prettiest cement-based overlays on the planet. (so much so I bought 40% of the company.)
I think you should at least do this: Before you start prepping the interior epoxy floor, create a saw cut right where the door meets the concrete so that you can cleanly terminate the epoxy at the saw cut. Then, grind off the junk that the other trades got on the slab when they were building the house and leave the exposed untreated. The aesthetic of the bare concrete can be chalked up to “Using materials honestly."
