Laundry and utility rooms
Can a laundry room or utility room floor be coated?
Yes, and most of the work is emptying the room, because the washer and the dryer have to be disconnected and moved before anybody touches the floor.
The short version
- The room has to be emptied. Somebody disconnects and moves the washer, the dryer and anything plumbed in.
- A gas appliance gets disconnected by somebody licensed for it, and that gets arranged ahead of time.
- Floor drains, pipe penetrations and a water heater pan take the labor in a small room.
- Water lands on this floor on purpose, so the finish is chosen to be cleaned rather than to look like a showroom.
- A laundry or utility room is often coated in the same trip as the basement it opens off.
The washer and the dryer
This is the part people underestimate. A washer has to be shut off at its valves and disconnected, a dryer has to come off its vent, and both have to go somewhere while the floor is done. A laundry sink, a water softener, a water heater and a furnace are the same conversation, and a gas appliance belongs to somebody licensed to disconnect it.
So the first question in a utility room is who moves what. A homeowner handles some of it, and the gas and the plumbing do not belong to a floor crew. Sorting that out ahead of time is the difference between a room that gets coated and a room that gets rescheduled. If it opens off a basement you are already having done, it gets coated in the same trip.
Working around the drains and the pipes
A small room is almost all edges. A laundry or mechanical room has a floor drain, a standpipe, a water heater pan, gas and water lines coming up through the slab, and a doorway or two, and every one of those is a place somebody has to stop the coating cleanly by hand.
The floor drain is the one to ask about. It stays a working drain, so the grate comes out and the coating gets carried into the opening and terminated there instead of run over the top of it. Pipe penetrations get the same treatment. In a room this size, that hand work is most of the labor on the job.
Choosing a finish for a room that gets wet
Nobody is showing off a laundry room. Water lands on this floor from a hose, an overflow, a wet load carried across it and a mop, so the finish gets picked for cleaning: enough texture to stand on when the floor is wet, and few enough seams and edges that dirt has nowhere to collect.
A coved edge, where the floor turns up the wall a little instead of stopping at a square corner, is worth raising here. It holds water on the floor instead of letting it run under the base trim and into a wall cavity. It is a small change in a small room, and it gets settled while the quote is being written.