This afternoon, I decided I was going to see what my garage is actually built out of. I’ve had dreams ever since we got in this house of backing the Scout into the garage, pulling the top off, and starting the long process of tearing the body down to the frame for a retub. Pipe dreams, perhaps, but the backing the Scout into the garage part has been sounding particularly good given the amount of snow we’ve received in December. There are two reasons I haven’t done this already: a makeshift front wall where the garage doors used to be, and a 6″ raised wooden subfloor inside the structure. So it was with great curiosity and a mild fear that I jacketed up, crowbar in hand, and walked outside to face the unknown. The Scout started on the second try with a squirt of starter fluid and I ran her until the idle smoothed out (God, I love that truck), and while she warmed up I went inside and moved the assorted car parts and lumber out of the way to areas that didn’t look like they were wet.

The first floorboard came up pretty easily, and to my dismay I found no concrete underneath—the original footprint of the garage is an uneven dirt floor. At some point in the last ten or twenty years (based on the age and color of the concrete) a 2′ footer was poured down the middle of the foundation and 2×6’s were laid every 18 inches from edge to edge, then covered with plywood. Given the grade and condition of the wood, I’m going to have to find some other way of protecting the Scout for a few years until I can dig the dirt out and have someone pour me a new floor. In which case I may just have somebody bulldoze the whole structure and start from scratch. Sigh.