My Family Went to Disneyland Without Me and Left Me at Home By Myself to do Really Really Hard Work: DAY 1

So I’m tiling our downstairs entryway, eating area and kitchen with some beautiful 18”x18” travertine tile, which I recently bought for a pretty good price. The plan for the past couple of months has been to finish the tiling by the time Michelle returns from spring break vacation with the kids. That means I’ve got to get it done this week. Because of some setbacks, I’m a little behind schedule, but finally moving forward.

To give you some background first, I’ve spent the past few weeks getting the concrete slab prepared for the travertine tile. That included removing carpet (piece of cake), a small section of tile (not that fun, but not too terribly difficult), and removing linoleum (linoleum is THE DEVIL!!). A couple weeks ago I was complaining to Michelle about how hard it is to remove the linoleum, and told her it’s taking so long I didn’t think I’d be able to get the tile job done by the time she gets back from vacation. I had taken 2 days to gouge off like 3 square feet of linoleum, and I was really discouraged (the concrete slab may or may not bear numerous scars of abuse as I pounded at it in frustration with my scraper blade). So after my whining spout I came home from work the next day and found that Michelle had finished off the entire kitchen. Those of you who know Michelle well could probably see that one coming. Now I’m not a prideful man, so I only felt like a little bit of a jack@$$. When Michelle’s determined to get something done, she gets it done, and NOW. (Because she can’t stand clutter and chaos, every time we move, she has the entire house unpacked within 2 days.)

Of course, with the linoleum up, I still had to scrape up all the glue, which took about a week, but I finally got it done. Because the slab isn’t perfectly flat, I then decided to use a self leveling compound (“slc”) over the entire 350+ square feet of floor that I’ll be tiling over. The principal behind the slc is, you pour it, and it finds its own level, flowing to the low spots, to give you a totally flat surface. So last Thursday evening we poured the compound, with Michelle and Jake mixing it for me while I poured. (Michelle didn’t care too much for that job. Jake didn’t mind – he got $5 for an hour’s work. Maybe Michelle was upset about not getting any money herself. I offered to pay her in “other services”, but she declined. Go figure.) After it was done, we had to hide out upstairs while the stuff hardened. I came down to see how it looked at around 11 pm, and found that IT DID NOT LEVEL ITSELF!!! The stuff was completely uneven, with high and low spots all over the place, way worse than the concrete slab had been. There was no way I could tile over that. I wanted to cry (FYI, the only times I cry is when Bruce Willis sacrifices himself to save the earth by shoving Ben Affleck into the elevator thingy in Armageddon, and when Eddie saves the planet from total destruction by flying his plane into the alien spacecraft in Independence Day). After my well-earned 20 minutes of despair and self-pity, wondering how I’m ever going to get this tiling job done now, I started tearing the stuff off by breaking it up with a sledge hammer. Six hours later, having taken up about 15% of the stuff, I finally called it quits a little after 5 am, took a shower, and went to sleep for 2 hours (with my sore and no-longer-functional hands clenched in front of my chest like an invalid) before going to work. On Friday after work I rented a chisel hammer and used that to tear up the rest of the slc crap (CBP’s LevelQuick is also the DEVIL), finally finishing on Saturday afternoon.

So I got the project back to the state it was in before the self leveling nightmare, filled in a couple low spots to give me a more even surface, and was ready to start laying tile on Sunday afternoon. At the end of Day 1 (Sunday), here is what I have accomplished:


Not much, but it’s a start. Hopefully I’ll be close to done by the time Michelle and the kids return next week, so Michelle can once again enjoy those totally non-essential luxuries she so desperately depends on (i.e., oven, refrigerator and dishwasher).

Rick