With the holiday weekend among us, I was in no mood to stay around the office late on a Friday. The main office was closing early, the job was shutting down and most everyone else in the office was gone. I think the boss man Will was the only one who stayed all day. Cassie was in San Angelo with her Mom and we decided to meet in San Antonio so she could get back to Houston without the hassle of flying. We debated on what to do, but ended up deciding to stay in San Antonio with our friends Mike and Kim since we had both had long days of driving. We went to eat at Zios, an italian food restaurant that has really good bread, and their Calzone isn't half bad either. After dinner Mike informed us he had a Church league softball game around 10:00 that night and we had the option of going or not. We were up for an exciting game of 45 year olds and a few 20 year olds playing a friendly game of softball. We had a good time, especially watching Mike get real upset with himself for not playing well, the poor guy can't just go out and have some fun, he takes the event way too seriously. Mike played baseball in college so he is competitive by heart.
After a good evening out we headed back to their newly renovated home. They purchased a home in January and have been slaving away with repairs and renovations every night and weekend since. Mike is one of the handiest guys I know and can pretty much accomplish any task he sets out to perform. I hope I can get him to spend a weekend in Houston helping me with a few projects I have in mind for the house. Buying a new house has it's perks, but one of the downsides is not being able to do those projects to put your stamp on the deal. It just means I will have to use my energy and creativity to add value to the home with more custom features.
After staying up way too late and enjoying the company we took what seemed like a short nap and awoke early to travel home.
Now some of you may know this, but most of you don't. Early in the week Mom got the idea of having someone come look at sealing the grout and tile in our Den and kitchen. She made a few calls, and ended up calling one of her school children's parents to see if he knew anyone since he was in the flooring business. Well as luck would have it, the salesman made a sale. He talked numbers and square footage and they decided that for not much more than the cost to clean up and seal the floors he could put in a brand new floor all together. We had talked about all of the pros and cons up until Thursday and decided that the best way would be to demolish the old tile to put down the new, and keep the elevation the same as opposed to putting the new floor on top. Here lies the dilemma . . . he wanted a few thousand dollars more to rip out the old and that just wasn't in the budget. So after talking it out, we decided to tackle the job ourselves. We could rent a "Tile Scrapper" for about 40 bucks for the weekend, we would get some rubber maid tubs to make small loads for the dump and we would have it all knocked out in the two days alloted.
Back to the weekend for a sec.
We got on the road around 8:30 and decided to make a stop at the outlet shops in San Marcos. We have found some pretty good deals there in the past and we had some things in mind for the new house that we wanted to do some price checking on. You never know with these places if the deals are really good, so we needed to get some info. Cassie has been saving her "Lee Bucks" for a new table and she has been on a serious hunt for a deal. We did not get lucky with the table, but we found a few small things that were good deals and we couldn't pass up. I think we got out for about a hundred bucks with 2 new chairs and a brightly colored duvet for one of the guest rooms/cassie's new craft room.
Back on the road and we were in Houston by around 3:00. We stopped by the Apartment to unload a few things and then got back on the road for Texas City.
When we arrived we immediately got to work. Mom, Kimber and Ginny had been killing themselves the past two days cleaning out the rooms in preparation and it was down to putting up plastic and moving out the appliances. Well it took a few trips to Lowes to get the appropriate plastic. . . . my mother is very stubborn and even though I was very specific about what mill plastic to buy she opted for something else, the plastic that was much heavier and more difficult to tape to the ceiling because it kept wanting to fall. She was fooling herself into thinking that the thicker plastic was going to protect her millwork from the flying pieces of tile, but had that covered with a plan to use cardboard in the areas we were working.
After checking out the "Tile Scrapper" she had picked up earlier in the day, I realized we were in trouble. The machine was designed for scrapping linoleum tiles, not ceramic and it was not making a dent in the 30 year old ceramic tile. Of course it was a holiday weekend and the store closed early, but we lucked out and our next door neighbors happen to be related to the owner of the rental company. We were able to get ahold of their son and he quickly brought out the correct chipping hammer that I had set out to get in the first place, but the "man" on the phone told me this was much better . . . I will go with my experience the next time.
After chipping away for a few hours, I managed to tick off my sister and wear myself and Cassie out so we decided to call it quits around 10. We got about half of the kitchen knocked out, but there was plenty more to go.
Sunday morning we awoke, sore and very slowly . . . boy those muscles get sore when you don't use them very often. After a few more hours of chipping it was near 12:00 and we needed to make our first trip to the biosphere. Cassie and I loaded up and we dumped the 10 tubs while Kimber went for lunch and Mom cleaned off some surfaces to eat.
After lunch we got going and after about 10 minutes we hit another road block. It appears the machine and extension cord were getting overheated and we began a small smoke storm which melted the extension cord and freaked my beautiful bride out. She thought the house was going to burn down within minutes but I tried to calm her down. After showing her it was a small predicament we decided to let it cool off for an hour while we dumped a few more tubs and went for an ice cream break. Keep in mind that while we were waiting for the appropriate tools we were using sledge hammers to break the tile out and that wears you out very very quickly.
When we got back we still could not get the chipping hammer to work so we called the guy back and he wouldn't be able to get us a new one till late that night. We decided to get back to the sledge hammers till then and see how much we could get done.
Around 9:00 that night he showed up with a new one, but we were too tired to even pull the thing out of the box so we called it quits and decided to save the fun for Monday.
After a few hours of chipping the next morning we had completed the kitchen, and decided to leave the Den and entry way for the professionals. We'd had enough and there was no way you could convince us any amount of money was too expensive for the exhaustive physical labor removing a tile floor.
After cleaning up and relaxing a little, we grilled some burgers and hot dogs, had a few smores for dessert and then headed out to the new house for a tour with the Parkinson Grandparents.
I will have to update you on the progress of the house in the next post. I will go ahead and put up all of the new pic's though.
Pic's of the tile are in two places, we finally got mom trained in taking and uploading pictures to the internet. We got her a digital camera for mother's day and she has loved using it. When the guys were laying the new tile throughout the week she couldn't stand not being able to share the photos so I walked her through uploading and she has it down (for the most part)
Enjoy!
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