Posted on April 3, 2012
by Renee Spindle
With Travel Man’s unpredictable schedule at work it is sometimes difficult to get our DIY (do it yourself) projects completed in a timely manner. Now you may be asking yourselves how do you ever get things done around the house? There must be a long “honey-do” list for Travel Man! We try really hard to keep the “honey do’s” to a minimum, but when there’s a project to complete that requires Travel Man’s experience and muscle here’s what we do.
Our latest endeavor is to get our entryway flooring replaced. Now, the first phase of this project is a story all on its own. You know how you get a plan together for demolition, begin to execute that plan, and then realize you need a plan B? Well that’s what happened on this project.
With my Domestic Goddess status in full swing, I told Travel Man I had plenty of time to try to take out the tile. The key word here was “try”. I had a big chisel, hammer, and a multi-function, variable speed tool to begin my project. I was using the multi-function tool to get the grout out-of-the-way, and then the chisel and hammer to get up and under the tile to get it removed. Seemed like a fairly simple task. I can do this, is what I told myself. Well, after the demo of the first two tiles, I was done. This was a project that was going to kick me in the bootie, and I had to ask Travel Man, “What’s plan B?” I much prefer sticking to the painting and decorating.
Plan B was to purchase a hammer drill, and get under the tile to bust it out of there. There was so much mastic under the tile, it was like the previous tile master in this house used all the mastic he could muster for this project. So, the demolition for this project now falls in Travel Man’s lap. Remember I was on jury duty for most of the month of March, so when Travel Man had a few days off he was working on the tile removal. This was a very, very labor intensive undertaking. It also created more dust in the house than I have seen in a long, long time. Dust here, dust there, dust everywhere!
Here’s a few pics of the project so far, and my dusty hubby from the process!! It was quite an undertaking, and took about 3 half days of removing the tile and then I volunteered to get all of the old grout/mastic dollops off of the floor. Now we have a nice smooth concrete pad that we are looking at putting some laminate flooring down on. That’s our next phase, flooring purchase and installation. So once we ( or should I say I) decide on the flooring, we will wait for a weekend when travel man is home to get it installed.
In the meantime I will be painting the entryway, and hopefully trying out some wall texturing. More on that project later this month.
If you have a DIY project to complete how do you find the time to work on it from start to finish? It’s not like the TV shows where rooms are complete in half an hour. It takes much, much longer…and in our case requires a lot of advanced planning. Happy DIY-ing everyone!
Here’s a picture of the package I gave to Evan. I waited until we were done eating breakfast to give it to him. I said, “Evan, I got you something to plant outside.” Evans says, “Really Grandma what is it?” I hand him the little “seed” package, and tell him its “seeds” to grow his own donuts. Everyone else at the breakfast table is talking this up, and excited for Evan. Evan takes the packet, and reads a little bit of it and then opens it to look at the “seeds”. Evan says, “Grandma, this is just Cheerios.” And I smile and pause, and tell Evan, “April Fool’s, I got you!!” 
