Rehab 4470 - The Electric Hammer Drill with Chisel Adventure

Next time someone (who will remain unnamed) wants to rip up old tile (that looks perfectly fine to me) and replace it with new 20" tile remind to me run away as fast as I can.  What started out as a reasonably good idea has been a lot of work and it is still not done. 

In the future it will not be underestimated again.

First we had the tile removed by a couple of guys resulting in box upon box of old tile pieces in the garage that we over time carted to the curb.  The boxes could not be too heavy otherwise the sanitation engineers would not accept them.  So we ended up making a couple of trips to the local liquor store for boxes (and a bottle or two, but not more than three, per trip).  Then we had to transfer from  the boxes in the garage to the smaller boxes and then cart it to the curb on the dolly.  Luckily Carrie (my daughter was over for a few days and helped).   Some how she could talk on the phone and pull the dolly.

Removing the tile however was just the first step.  That left a considerable amount of thinset on the floor.  In fact too much to tile over and hence my new tool adventure for this project: 

The 20 lb Electric Hammer drill with a chisel bit.

If ever there is a man tool this is it!

It even makes a huge mess that you can have others clean up after you for days..

In all seriousness it works pretty good as long as the blade is sharp.  So needless to say I used a grinder to sharpen the blade after about every 10 minutes to chisel up the thin set.  Carrie even got into it and got pretty good at it.   It took about a half day but with the right angle and pressure the thinset flys off the floor.  There were a few areas that were very thick and I took out pieces of the floor but at least its all level and clean now.

Thanks to Carrie for all the help.  I don't see her that often and probably won't even more after this adventure!  Just kidding - after a while I couldn't get that tool away from her..