The short answer
Repair and coat when the slab is sound and the damage is surface pitting, scaling, a few cracks or a failed old coating. Resurface first when the surface is pitted or delaminated across most of the floor but the slab underneath is solid. Replace when the slab is cracked into moving pieces, heaved or settled, or too thin and weak to hold a repair. Published GTA ranges, before HST: repair $7 to $15 per square foot of repair area, resurfacing $3 to $10, epoxy coatings $4 to $8 and polyaspartic $6 to $12, with a double garage in a full flake system at $2,800 to $4,500.
Three different problems that look the same from the door
Open the garage door and most failing floors look alike: grey, pitted, stained, maybe a crack or two and the remains of a paint job. Underneath that there are three different conditions, and they need three different jobs. The first is surface damage on a sound slab: salt scaling, pitting, a dusting surface, hairline cracks that are not moving. The second is a surface that has delaminated or scaled across most of the floor while the slab beneath is still solid and level. The third is a slab that has itself failed: cracked into pieces that sit at different heights, heaved at the door by frost, settled at the back, or poured so thin that there is nothing to repair to.
Telling them apart takes ten minutes with a hammer, a straightedge and a moisture meter, which is why we assess before we price. Tap the floor and a hollow drum means the top layer has separated. Lay a straightedge across a crack and an offset means the pieces are moving independently. Check the moisture, because a slab on grade in Toronto can be carrying far more water than it looks like, and that decides what can be put on it.
Repair and coat: the usual answer
Most garage floors are the first case. The slab is sound, the surface has taken twenty winters of salt and the old paint has given up. The job is to grind the floor back to clean, open concrete, cut out and fill the pits and spalls with a repair mortar that bonds, rout and fill the cracks, test the moisture, and then build the coating: a moisture-tolerant primer where the test says so, a base coat, a full broadcast of flake and a polyaspartic or polyurethane top coat that takes hot tires and road salt without lifting. Done in that order the floor is finished in a day or two and the coating lasts because the slab under it was dealt with first.
Resurface first: when the surface is gone but the slab is not
When the scaling or delamination covers most of the floor, grinding out and patching dozens of pits is slower and uglier than giving the slab a new face. The surface is ground to sound concrete, the floor is cleaned and primed, and a cementitious or polymer-modified resurfacer is placed across the whole slab to a uniform level and texture. That can be the finished floor, or it can be the base for a coating. It is the right call when the slab is solid and level but the top centimetre has had enough, and the wrong call when the slab is moving, because a resurfacer bridges nothing.
Replace: when the slab itself has failed
A garage slab that has cracked into pieces with a lip between them, heaved at the door so the car bottoms out, or dropped at the back where the fill under it settled, is past repairing. So is a thin, weak old pour that crumbles when it is ground. Replacement means breaking out the slab, dealing with the base and whatever let it move, placing a new reinforced slab with joints cut where it will want to crack and a slope to the door so meltwater leaves, and only then, after it has cured and dried, thinking about a coating. It is the biggest job of the three and the only honest one when the slab is the problem.
Between repair and replacement there is also partial replacement: one broken bay or the heaved strip at the door repoured and tied to the rest, with the sound floor repaired and coated around it.
What it costs, in published GTA ranges
Repair is priced on the area that actually needs work, not the whole floor: the published GTA range is $7 to $15 per square foot of repair area, with a small-job floor of $500 to $1,200. Resurfacing runs $3 to $10 per square foot basic and $7 to $12 decorative. Installed coatings run $4 to $8 per square foot for epoxy and $6 to $12 for polyaspartic or hybrid systems, with a double garage of 400 to 550 square feet in a full flake system at $2,800 to $4,500 and a moisture-mitigating primer adding $1.50 to $3 per square foot where the slab needs it. Replacement has no single published garage figure; the two published pieces are removal and disposal at $2 to $7 per square foot and new flatwork at $6 to $12, before anything specific to working inside a building.
All of those are before HST, and they are market ranges compiled from published Canadian sources so you can sanity-check any quote, including ours. The full table with every source named is on our cost page.
The order matters more than the product
Moisture test, then repair, then preparation, then the coating. Every peeling garage floor we are asked to look at skipped one of the first three. The brand of coating matters far less than whether the slab under it was sound, dry enough and mechanically prepared, which is also why a coating quote that does not list those lines is not comparable with one that does.
Key takeaways
- Surface damage on a sound slab is repaired and coated; a failed surface on a sound slab is resurfaced; a failed slab is replaced.
- A hammer, a straightedge and a moisture meter tell the three apart in ten minutes.
- Published GTA ranges before HST: repair $7 to $15 per square foot of repair area, resurfacing $3 to $10, epoxy $4 to $8, polyaspartic $6 to $12.
- A double garage in a full flake system runs $2,800 to $4,500 in the GTA; moisture primer adds $1.50 to $3 per square foot.
- Moisture, repair and preparation come before any coating, or the coating is a delamination with a delivery date.
Sources
The official and published sources this post relies on. Rules, fees and market prices change, so check the source before you plan around a figure.
- GLI Epoxy Flooring: Garage floor coating cost in Ontario, 2026, GTA source, as compiled on our cost page. Prices are quoted before HST.
- Coated.ca: Epoxy garage floor coating cost in Canada, 2026, Canada source, as compiled on our cost page. Prices are quoted before HST.
- HomeStars: Understanding epoxy flooring cost, Canada source, as compiled on our cost page. Prices are quoted before HST.
- HomeStars: Understanding concrete contractor cost in Toronto, Canada source, as compiled on our cost page. Prices are quoted before HST.
- Artisan Coat: How much does concrete resurfacing cost in Toronto, 2026, GTA source, as compiled on our cost page. Prices are quoted before HST.
Frequently asked
Can you coat over a pitted garage floor?
After the pits are ground out and filled, yes. A coating poured straight over pits and scaling follows the holes and lifts at their edges. Where the pitting covers most of the floor, resurfacing the whole slab first gives the coating a flat, sound base and a better finish.
Epoxy or polyaspartic for a Toronto garage?
Polyaspartic and polyurea top coats handle hot tires, road salt and UV through the open door better than a plain epoxy, cure fast enough to finish in a day or two, and sit at the higher published range. A good epoxy base with a polyaspartic top coat is the common hybrid. The choice matters less than the preparation under it.
Do I have to replace a cracked garage slab?
Only if the pieces are moving. A tight crack in a level slab is routed, filled and coated over. A crack with a lip, where one side sits higher than the other, means the slab has lost its base or broken through, and that section or the slab is replaced.
Why is my garage floor flaking in the first place?
Salt-laden slush dripping off the car, soaking the surface and freezing. The ice expands and pops the top layer off a little every winter, fastest on slabs that were finished too early or without air entrainment. Our post on why garage floors flake goes through it and what each depth of damage needs.
See it doneA salt-pitted Toronto garage floor, repaired and resurfaced wall to wallView →