demolition

Once the stove was all clean and shiny it was time to get the brick behind it up to snuff. Or so I thought, until I was ready to roll and realized I had no paint. So that story will wait for another day. Not to be deterred, We decided to demo the existing tile instead. This way, i figured. we could knock up any dust we wanted without disturbing our new paint job. Brilliant!

"before"

Who would want to see these go?!

 So, I started by trying to wedge out what I thought was the half-round trim. If you know anything about my parents house, you should know that the people who lived there before them did the most shoddy handiwork possible. And, this was the case again. It wasn't half round separating the tile and wood floor, you see. No, it was chunks of a hand rail. The kind of hand rail that goes along a staircase.

 No matter. We dug the handrails out of what turned out to be a sizeable trench, then just used a hammer and chisel to pull up the tile. I had been warned that this could be very difficult, depending on how the tile was laid, but they came up very easily and only a couple of them broke in the process.

It was dusty, and we definitely should have been wearing respirators. Again. Burning lungs aside, the task was actually super easy.

As we were knocking out the tile around the woodstove my dad asked why didn't we just move it. Um. I thought it couldn't be moved because it weighs exactly 93741234.3 pounds. But, apparently it can be done! So it was moved on to a sheet of plywood just next to us. I really wish I had known that was possible before I polished it. Anyway!

As we pulled up the tile we realized that it had been laid on what I intelligently declared was tin foil, but was actually sheet metal. The thin-set was coming off the metal in chunks, and tile needs to be laid on a clean, flat surface, so we decided to pull that up as well.

This turned out to be a little adventure for us, but that story, too, is for another day. For now, I'll leave you with this glorious image of a hearth free of disgusto-barfo 70's tiles, and a picture of said disgusto-barfo tile  on its way to the garbage.You're welcome.