Tile Removal and The Other Side of Renovation

It's hard to believe that the last update was as recent as Saturday because the place looks so different now. On Sunday I set out to remove the tile in the kitchen just like I wrote about, but since the tool from Harbor Freight uses more air than my compressor can deliver I needed to go a new route. Say hello to my little friend...



There's a LOT of tile to remove here.



Did I mention that this was going to stir up a little bit of dust? By the way, the shards of tile that went flying everywhere are almost as sharp as glass. I have the cuts to prove it.



The good news that I got it all done. Nothing makes you move fast like an expensive tool with a 1 day rental. No tile or thin set could stand up to the 4" chisel and hammer, and this would've taken at least a week to do on my own with my tools. The bad news is, it took 11 hours from start to finish and today I'm too tired to do anything. It's just as well because even though I used dropcloths and a fan to enclose the area a lot of dust still got out that I spent this evening cleaning up.



Which brings us to the other part of this post - life in a construction zone isn't always easy.



For the next three days we'll have an oven, kitchen sink and cooktop. We won't have an oven again until the cabinets are in (after the floor, venting, and electrical work is done), and we won't have a cooktop or kitchen sink until a couple of weeks after that because there won't be a countertop to put them in. Right now there's no floor in the kitchen, informal dining room, pantry or laundry room so that means there's a lot of dust flying around until the tile is in. I'm not exactly sure where the microwave will go... probably upstairs somewhere. The only thing I can do in the meantime is work hard so that life can return to normal as soon as possible, hope the wife is patient and try and be creative with what I cook in the microwave.