Bring Rod On

Come on....this has to make your stomach turn! Yuck.

Those "in the know" are aware of my feelings towards Rod Stewart. Watching a music video of him singing with that wiggly mole of his is pretty much my personal hell. Correction. Was my personal hell. Compared to what I did today, singing a face-to-face love song with theBrit would rank up there with watching Colin Firth emerge from a pond at Derbyshire while drinking a warm mug of freshly made wassail- pure bliss. My newly discovered fiery pit is to spend an eternity removing tile. Just chipping away at it, tiny little bit by tiny little bit.

The Russians came and started work. Not particularly speedy work but I suppose I have to say progress has been made.

We keep the kids downstairs now. um...except for this picture:-)

I realized that we hadn't really solved the sturdiness issue now that the posts were no longer being anchored into the wall. Thinking that they planned on finishing today (silly, naive me), I went to a wood store last night and bought some newels. Then I went to Home Depot to ask the friendly workers how to remove tile. My understanding was that the newels needed to be nailed to the subfloor and so the tile had to be gone. That meant I had to get it all up before they came to work today.

I returned home and told Jay of my plans. I strapped on his worker-kneepad-thingmajigs and got out the chisels, sledgehammer, mallet and a big dose of "I Think I Can" attitude. He had to work on a powerpoint presentation for resident conference today and prepare for a 7:oo am tumor board so he couldn't help me but I was determined to do it myself anyway. This was, after all, my idea and my glory (sounds eerily familiar when thinking of a certain someone else in a fiery pit, eh?) I called for Jay to take my picture so that I could remember my good work and show off to the world.

totally thinking I'm cool right now.

Notice in the picture how many tiles I had removed thus far. I had not reached the point where my back was spasming and I could no longer stand up straight. Nor when my wrist ached so bad that I couldn't squeeze the sledgehammer. You also won't see the scrapes that would soon appear on every single knuckle of both hands, the three slivers I would get, the sweat that would be dripping off of my face (if you remember...I am a headsweater) and the charlyhorse that took over my leg.

Three hours later, Jay told me he was going to bed and I heard the door to our bedroom close. Probably about 10 minutes later (maybe less...it's all a blur now) I started to cry. The pathetic, not-quite-silent, chest moving, shoulder shaking cry. Jay came out of the room to see what was the matter. I honestly wasn't going for damsel in distress but it did accomplish him chipping away 3 whole tiles. I went to bed with him and said I'd finish in the morning.

My technique changed dramatically this morning. My wrist was already throbbing by my first square and I realized I needed more force. I took the cold chisel (blue thing in above picture - it doesn't actually have to be cold. It gets its name by how it's made or so that friendly home depot worker tells me) and aligned it next to a tile. Then I stood up and with an almost golf swing wacked that chisel. Tile pieces were flying everywhere! Very, very messy and potentially blinding but a heckuva lot faster.

Unfortunately, as I was getting rid of the last 3 squares of tile, I pulled up the "subfloor" that I had been trying so hard to leave intact. My discovery was that the actual subfloor was beneath this 1/2 inch plywood mess. I spent the next two hours seeing if my golf swing technique was as effective on plywood. It wasn't. The chisel would get buried underneath and I would need to use Herculean strength to rip off a piece. I could have taken smaller pieces with less effort but only big chunks the size of a sheet of paper satisfied me now.

After a mere 8 hours of unbelievably back-breaking, tedious manual labor, I have a neat, clean subfloor ready for it's new laminate covering. (Turns out that it wasn't necessary for the tile to be up afterall. The Russians just nailed the newels into the stairs!)

I think this is just beautiful

I have realized why Jay hasn't finished this project. It's hard and it hurts. I don't want to do it and I can't imagine he feels that much differently. Thank goodness Pavil and Mikhail don't seem to mind.

Who doesn't want to see a cute picture of Henry just because?

Sammy has some very cool patches. We went for the cow look today