Flawed floor

We dodged the showers yesterday to take a quick peek at that mysterious garage floor. It's built more like a floor you'd find in a house rather than a garage. Every garage I've ever seen has a huge slab of concrete for a floor, not floorboards.

Most of it, I should say, is made of boards. In one small area - which looks in the right position to have been beneath the old MGC's sump for most of the time - the boards have been reinforced with additional timbers laid perpendicular to the run and screwed into place. Presumably the wood beneath had softened under the influence of countless oil drips. It certainly feels spongy to the tread.

Closer to where the door was, the boards give way to more substantial planking - pieces of timber stretching the whole width of the building but more than an inch thick and a good six inches wide or more. If these are in good condition when I lift them, they can supplant the rather too large and heavy planks which I originally bought for decorating. Even closer to the door the whole mess dissolves into small offcuts, bits of pine and whatnot which would make good kindling should we ever again have a fire in the dining room.

About three-quarters of the way across the floor, one of the boards is loose and gives a hint of What Lies Beneath: eight or so 2x4 joists supporting the boards and which themselves are resting on what looks like a mishmash of brick, concrete, and old tarmac. I don't think I can be entirely certain what it is until I start digging it up. At the moment it's covered in a film of white dust. I'll be ignoring discomfort and my long-time hatred of the damn things, and wearing a mask when I tackle this. There is a chance this dust is years of slough from the cement asbestos walls and I don't fancy keeling over with mesothelioma in twenty years.

This is turning into yet another example of how one job leads to another. The demolition was just the start!