The Demolition Zone

So the tile demolition hit a snag last weekend. The one room went rather smoothly with the tiles popping up. So Hubby moved into the dining room to find that the tiles were attached to the floor with something quite a bit stronger than the previous room. He was getting about 35 tiles an hour popped up in the first room and about 1 tile an hour in the dining room. Poor guy looked absolutely defeated. So I called the local rental store and explained our predicament. They had a machine called a Bear Cat Stripper than is used to strip linoleum, carpet and tiles. It didn't sound strong enough but we thought what the heck. So I went in and rented it. While I was there I wanted to see what else they had in case the Bear Cat thing didn't work. Second option was a demolition hammer. Then if that didn't work they had a jack hammer. The jack hammer was the last possible option since it might damage the slab.  So I decided to rent the Bear Cat stripper and the Demolition hammer, hoping one would work.

Hubby tried the Bear Cat thing first to find it just wasn't heavy duty enough to do the job, it got a few tiles up but not any faster than the air hammer he was using in the first place. The he tried the demolition hammer. Jack pot! He looked like a kid on Christmas morning he was so happy. It tore right through those tiles like they were butter. Of course the poor guy was getting quite the work out having to be the brute strength behind the tool. He got all 170 tiles chipped up in three hours. We are officially done taking up the tiles! Next step is to rent a concrete grinder to grind down all the uneven places where the foundation work was done, tear up the old carpet in areas and put down new carpet!

The strange thing about this video is that the kids are completely unphased by the sheer destruction and NOISE going on in the next room. They are just playing away like nothing is happening. Bizarre.