Who hijacks my brain?

I live in an Victorian Terraced (circa 1870) house which has a coal cellar that we Brits jokingly call a basement. In it I keep an increasing number of brand new power tools (still boxed) for which I have yet to find a use (I put it down to flat screen syndrome). Its also filled with good intentions.

The cellar, sorry basement, is damp because its concrete floor is porus. Most of the time it looks like someone has sprinkled a bucket of biscuit crumbs over the floor and about this time of year I sweep it clean to discourage nature offering it out to a family of voles.

It has been like this since time began and the house shows no intention of falling down. So you'd advise me to, "LEAVE IT ALONE, CHRIS" wouldn't you? And I'd agree.

So who told my brain that it would be a good idea to pour the contents of a part used, 20-year old tin of masonary paint onto the floor on the basis that it would glue all the biscuit crumbs together to form a smooth, hard wearing 21st century floor?

Now I have a basement worthy of a film set from 'Swampman meets Godzilla', with chemical effluent vapour rising from it that would make an ICI plant seem fragrant.

My only consolation is that if I can't stay down there for more that a minute without my skin erupting into suppurating sores, no vole is going to want to rent the space this winter.