Covering cut-pile carpet in work room

[zimm17]

I'm using my finished basement as a workshop/man cave. The previous owners had just installed $3000+ cut-pile wall to wall carpet with thick "nike"? padding. The stuff is slick too, especially on the stairs. Anyway, I decided to leave in place. Now I have my work benches, storage shelves, gun safe, etc all in the room. What I'd like to do now is put something in the open area of the room so I can roll in my Harley and do some work on it and to make it easier to vacuum up shavings from the drill press, etc. Can I put some type of rubber tiles down? Or maybe a commercial or indoor/outdoor type carpet in the open area and a fat sheet of plywood to put the bike on? I know the obvious answer is to remove the carpet and finish the concrete floor, but I'm hoping for an easier solution...

Here's the room in question before I moved into the house.

 

[Flexia]

I think it would be better to pull the carpet up and store it then to lay something over it. I would think its going to get stains on it even with a cover of sort

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[zimm17]

That's what I'm starting to think. I don't know if can put a 1000 pound gun safe on top of racedeck...

Edit- racedeck says they hold 50,000 pounds. I think my safe will be safe on the floor. Now to convice the wife I NEED to redo my workshop.

 

[zimm17]

I'm using this room because the garage is packed with 2 SUV's, 2 motorcycles, Air compressor, bead blaster, gas jerry cans, generator, yard tools, and a set of plastic shelves for all the HAZMAT/chemicals/paint.

Work room has 4 sets of plastic sheves, two work benches, two roll around tool boxes, 2 gun saves, and a chest freezer. I want to put my harley in there to work on it- that would DESTROY the white carpeting no matter how hard I try to keep it clean.

I think pulling up the carpet and dropping $1200 on racedeck will be the winner. I'm thinking solid charcoal diamond plates.

I could roll up the carpet and padding and store in the crawlspace, but it would probably just get ruined/moldy, etc.

We just put in 600sq/ft of rubber floor tiles up in the formal living room/dining room area and turned it into the kids play area. So my wife will probably like the idea of doing tiles in the basement too.

 

[zimm17]

The racedeck is a little cheaper then that (with garagejournal.com discount) and made in the USA too.