Floor Coating Deposits: When the Money Should Change Hands
Everclad takes no deposit and bills on completion. Here is why a one-day floor does not need your money up front, what a big deposit demand signals, and how contractor financing is really priced.
With Everclad, no money changes hands until the floor is finished. No deposit at the estimate, nothing to hold the date, nothing on install morning. The flat $8 a square foot is agreed in writing before the crew is booked, it does not move, and it is due once the work is done and you have walked the floor. That is worth stating plainly because the deposit question is one of the few reliable ways to read a floor coating company before you hire it - what a firm asks for up front tells you how it is funded and how confident it is in the work.
On this page
The payment schedule, in full
| Stage | What you pay |
|---|---|
| Instant estimate on the site | Nothing |
| On-site measure and written quote | Nothing |
| Booking your install date | Nothing |
| Install day, work under way | Nothing |
| Floor finished, you have walked it | The agreed flat price, in full |
That is the whole schedule. There is no draw at material order, no progress payment at lunchtime, and no separate charge appearing once the grinder has exposed something. Everything the slab needs - the grind, the crack and pit repairs, the polyurea base, the flake, the polyaspartic topcoat - sits inside the one number, which is what makes a fixed price possible in the first place.
What a deposit is actually for
Deposits solve a genuine problem in some trades. A contractor ordering custom cabinetry cut to your kitchen, or a fabricator buying a stone slab that fits nowhere else, is out real money on a job that only exists for you. Asking you to carry part of that is fair.
A garage coating is not that job. The base, flake and topcoat are stock products in standard blends, and if your install moved to next month the same material goes down on somebody else's floor. The crew is on site for a single day. There is no long lead item, no custom fabrication, and no working capital gap that lasts longer than the drive to your house.
Which means that when a coating company wants a substantial payment before it has done anything, the money is doing something other than buying your materials. Usually one of two things: locking you into a sale you agreed to under pressure, or funding a job it finished last week. Neither is a problem you should be underwriting.
The short version
One day of work, stock material, no custom order. There is nothing in a residential floor coating that requires your money before the crew arrives.
What a deposit demand tells you
- Money asked for on the first visit, tied to a price that expires tonight. A discount that dies when the salesperson leaves the driveway is a closing tool, not a discount. A real price survives you thinking about it.
- More than roughly a third up front, or the whole amount. At that point you are the lender, without any of a lender's protections.
- Cash, Zelle or Venmo only. No card, no check, no paper trail, and none of the dispute rights that come with a card. This is the single strongest warning sign in the list.
- Being asked to sign off, or pay in full, before the work is finished. Wisconsin addresses this head-on: ATCP 110, the state home improvement trade practices code, bars a seller from asking a buyer to sign a completion certificate or make final payment before the improvement is complete.
- No written contract, or a contract that says "garage floor" and a number and nothing else.
- A deposit described as non-refundable with no cancellation window explained anywhere in the paperwork.
- A price that only exists after a two-hour presentation. Price theater and deposit pressure travel together. A company confident in its number publishes it.
Around Kenosha, Racine and the Lake County suburbs there is a seasonal version of this worth naming: the spring wave of crews working door to door on driveways and garages, quoting on the spot, wanting cash before the truck moves. Some are fine. The ones that are not are gone by June, and so is the deposit.
What the rules already give you
None of the following is legal advice, and none of it replaces reading the contract. It is simply the floor beneath any decent installer, and knowing it changes how a kitchen-table conversation goes.
Three days to change your mind. The FTC cooling-off rule generally lets you cancel a sale of $25 or more made somewhere other than the seller's normal place of business - your kitchen table included - until midnight of the third business day. The seller is supposed to hand you a cancellation notice at signing. If nobody offers one, that itself is informative.
Wisconsin home improvement rules. ATCP 110 covers what a home improvement contract has to contain, what happens when a written contract is altered or materials are substituted, and how cancellation and the return of payments work. If your garage is in Kenosha County or Racine County, that is the framework your job sits inside.
Illinois side of the corridor. Homeowners in Gurnee, Waukegan and the North Shore are covered by Illinois home repair statutes that require a written contract for residential work above a modest dollar threshold. Different code, same expectation: get it in writing before anything is paid.
What financing actually costs
Paying on completion already spreads the cost at zero cost to you - the weeks between booking and install are yours to arrange money in. If you want to spread it further than that, the important thing is knowing how contractor-arranged plans are priced, because the headline rate is rarely the whole number.
The dealer fee. When a contractor offers a promotional rate, the lender charges the contractor a percentage of the job for it. That fee is either absorbed out of margin or added to your price. So there is one question worth asking any installer that offers a plan: is the cash price the same as the financed price? If the financed price is higher, the promotional rate has a cost after all, and it is on your invoice rather than your statement.
Deferred interest is not the same as zero percent. The two are advertised almost identically. With a true 0% promotion, interest simply does not accrue during the window. With deferred interest, interest is accruing the whole time and is waived only if you clear the entire balance before the window shuts - miss it by a month or by a dollar and the full back-dated interest on the original amount lands at once. A late payment can also end the promotion early.
Ask whether the loan touches the house. Some home improvement lending is secured against the property. For a project of this size that is worth knowing before you sign, not after.
Compare it against money you already have access to. A credit union personal loan, a card you already hold, or an existing line of credit are all things you can price calmly at your own kitchen table with nobody waiting. Any rate quoted out loud in your garage is a sales figure - the lender's written disclosure is the document that counts.
What belongs on paper first
| Item | What good looks like |
|---|---|
| Price | One flat number, plus the square footage it is calculated from |
| Scope | Full diamond grind named as the prep, plus base, flake blend and topcoat |
| Schedule | Install date, and the cure schedule you are handed at the end |
| Guarantee | Written workmanship guarantee that names peeling and delamination |
| Insurance | Current certificate of liability insurance in the company name |
| Payment | When it is due, and which methods are accepted |
The guarantee is the item most worth reading twice, because the exclusions are where coverage quietly disappears - our guide to coating warranties works through the wording. It is also worth understanding why coatings fail before you sign anything, since the failure modes and the warranty exclusions tend to be the same list.
Everclad publishes its price rather than presenting it, quotes a flat rate that includes everything the slab needs, takes nothing up front, and gets paid when you have a finished floor. If you want the number for your garage without a sales visit, the instant estimate takes about a minute. For the wider picture on what garage floors sell for, start with our cost guide, and if you are local, see garage floor coating in Kenosha.