Deerfield Wood: Tuesday Update

I used a vacation day from work because the wood was supposed to arrive today. That gave me plenty of time at home to focus on the tile mortar around the entry way and front closet. It took me a good 6 hours or so to do maybe 15 square feet. This stuff was really on there! By the end of the day the chisel that came with the air hammer was worn down nearly all the way so it looks like I'll be stopping by Harbor Freight on the way home from work tomorrow. Somehow they're able to sell a set of air chisels for $3 according to their website. As long as I can get the thing to last for about another 8 square feet of tile in front of the fireplace they're fine by me.

I also was able to scrape a lot of drywall texture and carpet padding glue off the floor today. The hallway is clear except for underneath the baseboards (still to come off). Most of the dining room is done too. That means I was able to start testing for moisture this evening. I've got my fingers crossed that it comes out well!

It turns out it was a really good idea to pull the baseboards. They were almost an almond color when they were put in (before carpet was installed probably) and someone repainted them white at some point. They didn't get the white paint all the way down though and the baseboards were two colors. With them off the wall I'll be able to clean them up, repaint and install them on top of the wood so I won't need a shoe molding.

My plans tomorrow are to pull the baseboards in the hall and carpet / tack strip in the living room. The wood did come in today - all 1,210 lbs of it. The delivery guy and I moved it piece by piece (22 boxes at 24kg each) into the garage, and then I brought it inside the house later. I'm going to sleep pretty well tonight...

I think it's going to rain tonight. We discovered that the flashing around the chimney wasn't installed right after sunday morning's downpour. The roofing company came back out and made some repairs, and I'm looking forward to getting the chance to test how well they came out before the new flooring gets installed.

So a few things that I learned:
Broken pieces of ceramic tile are SHARP. Like glass sharp. It's easiest by far in my opinion to try and remove the tile whole. Hitting the top of a tile to try and break it up doesn't work. It just sends pointy tile shards everywhere while the big pieces don't move. Maybe this works better where they weren't put down that well to begin with. No matter how you do it, be sure to have safety glasses on.

On removing tile cement:
This is the worst job you can do aside from digging in the summertime Texas sun. That's the one good part about this - you're indoors. But I came across a couple of things that make the job slightly less horrible. First off, use an air hammer. Buy one, rent one, find one. Get one somehow. You will get nowhere fast if you try using a hammer and chisel if the tiles were put down well. You NEED an air hammer. And some safety glasses and earplugs to go with, because bits of cement will go flying everywhere and it's also loud.

Another tip is to wet the tile cement before chipping away at it. A lot less dust will fly around and it's somewhat easier to remove the stuff that way. You don't need to drown the area, just get it damp.

On floor scrapers, my advice is to go ahead and just buy one. They're not expensive and you'll probably need it for more days than you thought anyway. But don't get the biggest one (14 in?). The corners of these things work better than the middle section.

To remove baseboards, take a blade and score the corner between the top of the board and the drywall. This is to keep the paint from pulling off the wall. Then carefully hammer in a putty knife and start sliding it around to feel for where the nails are. When you find one, slide in a small prying tool (NOT a screwdriver!) between the putty knife and baseboard. Now you can start rocking the knife back and forth some to slowly loosen the baseboard from the wall. Don't pull too hard or you'll risk splitting the wood. It'll get loose before long and you can move on to find the next nail. Keep going until the whole baseboard is loose and then you can carefully work it off the wall. Remember to always have a putty knife between the tool and wall to keep from damaging the sheetrock.

Now for a few pictures:

I had second thoughts about pulling up the carpet until I got to see what the back side looks like. For what it's worth, the carpet is 7 years old and I think people only lived in the house while it was down for 4 or 5 years. This stain is by the kitchen. I guess somebody's icemaker leaked a little.

Nearly all the tile is removed. It's kind of a neutral color but showed a lot of scratches and wear. This is before I knew how horrible it was going to be to remove the gray tile cement...