Camping In - Part I - Making Camp & Breaking Tile

I got pretty down and desperate last month.  Nothing was moving forward on our project and I wasn't seeing any signs of that changing soon.  In hopes of jumpstarting things up there, I called my lifelong best friend, B, out in California and we made plans for him to fly out for a few weeks to consult on the disaster and try to do as much work as he could. 

B flew in on a Tuesday and I took a couple days off work and we headed up there on Thursday morning for a three day weekend.  

When we arrived we set up camp in the master bedroom.  We spent the first afternoon just sweeping and shop-vacking the campsite.

The next morning we got down to work.  We went into town and rented a Hilti Demo-Hammer to put the hurt on those crazy stubborn kitchen floor tiles.  You might recall that I spent a long day upstate back in November during which I wrecked my back hammering at the old kitchen tiles. Happily, where my mini-sledge hammer and big chisel had been slow and painful, the Demo-Hammer was fun and relatively low-impact on our backs and finished the job in time to return it and grab the half-day rate.

I'm not saying I want to buy my own little jack-hammer, but it really was pretty fun to use - although the earplugs and respirator were essential.  The job was done in under 4 hours.