So busy I can't get anything done

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. A series of June storms hit causing record high water on our lake and some minor flooding in our basement. Which was the perfect excuse to rip out the scary 1970's carpet. The question was what to do then, and the answer was... TILE.

I picked up a tile saw off Craig's List, and we bought 400sq ft of clearance tile from Lowes. That weighs about 2400lbs, and we had to rent a truck to get it to the house. Hey, our Lowes doesn't rent trucks, but Home Depot does!!! I wish we had gotten a picture.

So after a short vacation to Chicago where we spent 2 days at the Museum of Science an Industry, we spent the rest of our vacation learning to tile.

The thing that has been the worst about this project is that the carpet was adhesive backed, and you need to have enough of a porous surface for the tile cement to adhere. After trying various combinations of scrapers, chemical strippers, and floor sanders, I finally hit on the right tools.
An angle grinder and 6" diameter wire cup brush. Keep the area you are working on wet to minimize the sparks and dust. Unfortunately I didn't discover this until the first room was done.

The rest of the project is languishing while I get caught up on other things.

Of course if you are going to take a week off work in my case, it just means I have to work extra before and extra after I get back. So one week after getting back from vacation, I was scheduled for 4 days of intensive CAD training. You see, a few months ago I had what I like to call my "Middle Age Computer Comeuppance Moment." Nothing like getting $10k worth of new computer design software and discovering I couldn't even draw a line. However my 19yr old assistant made the software sing.

Time to go back to school.

So after 4 days of cramming my brain so full that I was useless at home, its been a week playing catchup at work again.

And tomorrow, I leave work early for a long weekend of sailing.

More on that to come....

Bill