Concrete – benefit to painting concrete floors

As hinted at, boat coverings can be pretty tough. Spar varnish has such a reputation, and then there are the epoxy paints, which are actually probably the toughest, and most costly.

Installing hardwood flooring over concrete is generally not advisable for multiple reasons. Two of these reasons are: 1) oftentimes the concrete is moisture permeable, which means that any solid wood floor installed directly to the floor will buckle irreversibly; 2) typically solid wood floors are nailed to the substrate, which is not an option with concrete. One can install 1.5" sleepers on top of the slab to provide this nailing substrate, but this affects significantly things like ceiling height, door height, countertop height, etc. So this is generally not done as a remodel project unless you're remodeling the whole thing. One thing I would recommend as a compromise is finding some way to seal the slab, say with an epoxy paint, and then gluing an engineered wood floor to it.