A stained 629 sq ft trash room in a Seattle residential building got a solid gray Certified Penntek polyurea floor with an 85 ft cove base.
Every apartment building has one room nobody wants to think about. This one is the trash and recycling room of a Seattle residential building: a long concrete corridor with a floor drain, dumpsters and carts rolling in and out every day. Years of spills had left the slab black with grime, sticky residue around the bins and stains soaked deep into the concrete. Hosing it down did not help much anymore.
In February 2026 our crew installed a commercial floor coating in Seattle for the building's owner: 629 square feet of Certified Penntek polyurea in a solid gray, with a coved base running 85 feet along the walls. The room now has a smooth, sealed surface that can be washed down.
We walked the room in October 2025. The slab was in OK condition structurally, but the surface was a mess:
On install day the moisture reading was 3.7%. The slab was 50°F, the air 40°F and humidity 65%, typical for a covered space in a Seattle February.
Residents still need to take out their trash, so the work was planned in stages over several days in mid-February. Bins were moved out, and the crew worked from the back of the room toward the door.
The coved edge is the part that makes this floor work. There is no seam where floor meets wall, so liquid has nowhere to hide and a mop or hose reaches every corner. See our commercial floor coating projects for other spaces built around that idea.
For a trash room, plain is practical. A solid gray shows the floor is clean at a glance, and it pairs with the concrete walls without looking like a garage. The gloss reflects the overhead lights, which helps in a room with no windows. A flake finish would work too, but the owner wanted the simplest surface to wash and inspect.
Trash rooms see acidic spills, food waste, heavy rolling loads and constant washing. Typical epoxy can get brittle and start to chip or peel, often within years 3–5, and once water gets under a coating it spreads fast.
Penntek polyurea bonds chemically to the slab at over 1,300 PSI. Before the coating comes up, the concrete will come up. The topcoat is non-porous, so spills and grease stay on the surface. Watch the Penntek Stain Test to see what the surface resists. Our post on commercial versus residential floor coatings covers what property owners should ask about.
Seattle has a lot of mid-rise residential and mixed-use buildings with service rooms like this one: trash rooms, bike rooms, parking levels and loading areas. These floors get washed often and stay damp for months each year, so a sealed, coved floor makes upkeep much easier for building staff.
Learn more on our Seattle commercial concrete coatings page, or look at a Seattle business floor in Silver Creek flake.
Yes. It is one of the best uses for a polyurea system. The floor is ground clean, repaired and sealed, so spills and odors stop soaking into the concrete.
It is a curved transition where the floor coating runs up the bottom of the wall. It removes the corner seam where dirt and liquid collect, which makes washing down the room much easier.
We schedule commercial jobs around the building. Bins are moved and the work is staged so the room is out of use for as short a time as possible. We plan the timing with the owner or manager before we start.
Manage a building with a floor like this? Book a free on-site quote or call 425-226-6085.
Here's just a few of our previous projects.
