Floor sander - www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Cl...
Coating Removal Disc - www.homedepot.com/p/rental/Di...
Concrete Stain - www.brickform.com/product/art...
Concrete seal - www.brickform.com/product/gem...
If you have a concrete basement or garage floor that you want to remove paint from, you'll want to watch this video.
Someone painted the concrete floor in our basement many years ago (the house is around 60 years old). We had no idea what type of paint (water or oil based) it was, and a lot of it had already chipped off, or was worn away. We originally thought about just leaving it and covering the floor with laminate tile, but we found out that we had slight moisture issue. If something with a rubber or plastic backing was left on the floor for an extended period of time (weeks/months), the area under it would darken up from moisture buildup. A local concrete supply company recommended we strip and stain the floor, so that's what we did. Little did I know how much of a pain it would be to remove the paint. I thought I could simply scrape it off, but I quickly found that would have taken days, and my arms may have literally fallen off by the end of it. I didn't want to use chemical strippers as I didn't want those fumes in the house. I tried an orange stripper, but that just seemed to make it harder to remove the paint. Local rental stores recommended floor grinders, but they would remove around 1/8" of concrete, and they also could only get within a few inches of a wall, so that wasn't going to work. I also tried a floor buffer with a course buffing disc, but that did next to nothing. I finally found a floor sander with diamond blade at Home Depot and this thing did the trick. It did take several hours to do around 1000 sq ft of space, but it worked really well. I would highly recommend using this machine to strip paint or mastic off of a concrete floor.
After sanding and cleaning, I stained the floor with a water-based Artesian stain from Brickform (www.brickform.com/product/art.... An acid-based stain is recommended for new concrete, but old concrete has a different Ph level, so water-based stain is recommended for it. Water-based stains are a little more forgiving as well. If you spray it and decide you don't necessarily like it, you can wipe it off with a wet rag (if it hasn't completely dried yet) and start over. If it did already dry, you can still remove it, but you may need to use something more aggressive such as Xylene. Just check out the directions on whatever stain you purchase to see what it recommends.
Once stained, you'll want to seal the floor. I used a semi-gloss seal as I didn't want the floor to have too much of a shine. I applied two coats of seal with a roller. Brickform recommended spraying the seal on, but my sprayers didn't seem to give an even coat, so I rolled it.
How to strip paint from a concrete floor
How to stain a concrete floor
How to diamond grind a concrete floor
DIY concrete staining a basement floor