May 27

So poor homewrecker still can't wreck anything except the couch because of bouts of nausea and a percocet haze :o( He's sad, but it fell to me to do damage to the old master bath tile.

Homewrecker apprentice, that's me!

Suited up with heavy duty gloves (for the wire lath and super sharp shards of porcelain that will fly), face mask (so as not to breathe in the mortar dust), eye protection (for the super sharp shards of porcelain that will fly), and ear protection (for the sounds of metal hammer hitting metal crowbar). It's all very similar to wearing the protective elements of a hazmat suit, with shorts.

Luckily, half the floor of our current half bath was added on, and we knew that the contractors for the addition would never have added tile and then covered over it with that hideous yellow vinyl, so only half the floor needed abusing.

Did you know that when a hammer strikes porcelain tile, it can create sparks? Pretty cool.

Anyway, I started with removing the original old vanity and top (only had a few nails holding the whole thing together) and recruited homewrecker between bouts to help me move it to the garage. Underneath that exposed the original gray, pink, and white mosiac tile of the sixties. I tackled that with a wonderbar and hammer, along with a masonry chisel. Slammed out a lot of past real estate frustrations with it and got just that area out, and down to the wire lathe in about 30 minutes. With no air circulation, just the window open, and all walls closed off to keep the dust down, I was totally slathered in legendary Hurt/Fisher sweat in just a few minutes. I know they're not in style anymore, so you can't buy them, but a headband for sweat would have been extremely helpful!

Homewrecker was able to overcome bouts for a bit to check on progress and suggested, seeing the progress I made, to use a crowbar (which I'd forgotten we owned). He found that and a heavy mallet and brought them to me. Within the next 15 minutes, I had half the floor up. Turns out the vinyl in the guest bathroom had glue that wouldn't quit, making the floor nearly impossible to pull up easily, but the vinyl in the master bath must have been smeared on by babies, cuz it came right up! Yay for babies!

Had to recruit homewrecker again to move the toilet . . . KEY: get an unusued washing machine drip pan without drain holes, line it with newspapers, and place drippy toilet directly on it and then slide the pan around. Holy crap, I wish we'd had that idea since 2005 - the Compton flip. That would have made things far easier. Needless to say, any wax from the base gets attached to the newspapers, and any water from the half of the 1.6 gallon flusher stays contained in the pan. Brilliant!

Once we got the toilet out of the way, I made the rest of the floor my bitch within 15 minutes. It was more tedious taking everything to the garbage can and cutting all the wire lathe than actually breaking up the tile and mortar bed. I even got to drop one of the huge-mungous pieces I excavated right at the back door, creating a gouge in the hardwood. Thank you, ladies and gents; no more applause. Just add to the list of "character" this house has.

I found out the filter on our shopvac was too clogged with sheetrock dust and dryer lint (nifty contraption used in conjunction with shop vac to clear out the exhaust vent for the dryer) to be saved and useful for vacuuming up all the little shards and debris to get any further, so had to stop. No suction, which, ironically, sucked. Stopped me dead in my tracks. I'll use that excuse instead of me feeling like I was going to pass out, as the reason for the stoppage.

By the end, the heavy duty gloves were soaking wet and holey from the wire mesh, the face mask was much more effective with my sweat applied, so that even though my breathing was impaired, the water in the mask served as a "filter" for any dust, my eye protection was so fogged up and drippy at the same time that I couldn't see anything, and my ear protection was even sopping wet. I didn't know your inner ears could sweat! But it all did the job . . . though my blood oxygen was low from the mask-wearing, I only had a couple of small impact cuts from porcelain that hit my non-hazmat-suit-wearing arms and leg. Pretty successful, if you ask me.

Rested, took a shower, ate dinner, took some advil, watched a little Return of the Jedi, and went to bed. That part of the project lasted just under 4 hours. Man, I'm out of shape!!!

Today's plan, assuming homewrecker feels better, is to finish getting the tar paper underlayment out from the bathroom, assessing the floor for any damage, pulling out the main vanity in the room, pulling up the rest of the floor, and starting to knock down walls. Once they're knocked down, we'll put up at least the sill plate for the poo room walls so I can start putting underlayment down around the toilet for the new honed travertine flooring. That's the plan, anyway. We'll have to see how homewrecker feels.