DEMO'ING TO REDO

Three weeks ago we started what I hoped would be a 3-4 day project. We wanted to replace our old kitchen counter, with its cracked tiles and chippy sink, with new tiles and sink.  I hoped to be able to get the most of this accomplished over the President's day weekend, with my hubby starting demo on Friday, while I was at work.  Go ahead, laugh.  I'll wait till you catch your breath again.

I really was hoping that after he removed the old original ceramic tile we would be able to use the plywood and concrete board that was there, maybe with some sanding and cleanup.  Instead, what he found after chiseling away the tile, was something called mortar bed decking, which is essentially a concrete-type mix poured over a layer of wood slats, roof decking and chicken wire.  What a mess!

So after that was all removed, we had to build a new subcounter.  This involved bringing home plywood and concrete board.  Which we then hauled back to Home Depot to get more correct sizes.  Actually, we were able to have them make a few cuts on the plywood for us, which helped a lot. The second piece of concrete board was in a smaller size, since we figured out we didn't need the 1/2 inch stuff we thought we needed, so we got something called Wonderboard. Easier to work with, but still took us putting a tile blade on our circular saw for cutting.

Sunday evening we were cutting the hole for the sink at probably 9:30 pm.  I do hope my neighbors had the next day off, like I did. No one came to complain, and remember, I live in a condo, so I'm sure they heard plenty.

My hubby stayed up till about 3 am drilling in all those screws into the Wonderboard.  I'd been up 20 hours, most of which would working on this, and had reached my max.  The next day we got to start tiling. Shall I state here that we didn't get done?  Tee hee, I'll expound on this next post.