Cleaning the garage


Tidying my workshop/garage has been the task of the last week. It’s been a much bigger task than I first thought. As of now I’ve done a first pass down the ‘main half’ of the garage.
My garage is pretty big, it’s not quite double width, but it’s close. and it’s at least an extra half a car length longer than my car. This means I get to have enough space around the edge for all kinds of stuff. And the ‘main half’ is my main workshop area. I have some shelving, a work bench, my pillar drill and my lathe along one wall.

I am not a naturally tidy person, and compounded on that, for the first year or so of using the garage I didn’t have a shop vac to clean up. Just a dust-pan and brush. So I have a general covering of sawdust everywhere 🙁

So this week I decided to work my way along, reorganising all the shelves, cleaning off all the sawdust, and hoovering clean. And whilst I’m at it I decided to paint the walls. Which were only bare breeze block. A simple coat of white makes a huge difference. It’s not too clear from these pictures

But believe me, in person that’s a lot more light and bright than the previous grey of breeze block. I’m hoping that the spiders won’t like the white, and it will show up more the webs and dust so that I will hopefully keep it more clean…

I still have loads to do, but I’ve also been thinking about what to do with the floor. The bare concrete slab isn’t that easy to clean, and I’d love to be able to do something nice with it. However, floor paints seem like a hell of a lot of hassle and without any guarantee of achieving a good finish.
There are various places that will sell rubber mat type things, both in sheets and in interlocking tiles. However both of these are very expensive options, costing something like 25 pounds a square metre. Which for something that must be close to 25 square metres….isn’t really an option.

The thing I keep thinking though is that maybe somewhere our there is some kind off rubber sheeeting that, albeit not special ‘garage’ flooring, would do the job. But perhaps not because I’ve not found anything suggesting budget options.
I don’t really need to cover the whole garage I guess, but I would still like an option that would be an improvement on the bare concrete, with the ease of laying tiles/matting, but with a very low cost…. any ideas?