The floor is up, the floor is up! Sounds like the opposite of the sky is falling, doesn't it? The Hubbers spent a grueling day hunched over the kitchen floor, whacking at tiles with a hammer and pry bar. All the tiles are removed - yippee! - except a few, extremely stubborn so and sos in front of the pantry that remains to be dismantled.
We've now got stacks of whole tiles to use elsewhere and many nearly full tiles lurking in the rubble piles. Given that removing the broken cement backerboard and massive amounts of adhesive from the tiles isn't appealing at this point in time, we're thinking some sort of garden application. Tile edging, perhaps?
While Jon was diligently cramping his muscles in the kitchen, I was finishing the green sand paint removal. (Which is now complete, thank goodness!) I felt quite like an archaeologist as I removed the layers of yet another bulging crack in the wall. Doesn't my giant wall slug look like it's feeding? Obviously it has an eye and a wide open, hungry mouth.
But I digress. The excavation of the bulging crack revealed the following strata, from top to bottom: Green sand paint, massive amounts of unsanded drywall mud (the source of the bulge), paper drywall tape, more green paint, sanded drywall mud, fiberglass drywall tape, joint between 2 pieces of drywall. The Mystery of the Bulging Crack is solved! It remains to be seen whether or not I can patch it better than it was.
Besides fixing wall defects, next up in the renovation line-up is removing decking screws from the kitchen floor. Lots of decking screws. One might safely say regiments of decking screws. Decking screws that were driven into the cement backerboard (tile underlayment) every 6 inches, at angles every which way except straight up and down. Decking screws whose heads are impacted with tile adhesive. I think I need a renovation mantra. Something like, "It'll all be worth it in the end." Yes, that's the ticket.
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