Home renos - Ceramic tile

I haven't been doing much of anything fun lately as we rip and gut the interior of our newly purchased home. It's always interesting to speculate on why the previous owners did something a certain way. I'm certain stuff I've decided to do at my old place is now befuddling the current owners (although I left sticky notes everywhere!)

In this case we removed the ceramic tiles in the front entrance - and found another ceramic tile installation underneath. Two demo jobs for the price of one! We should have been alerted to the fact when the flooring guy took a peek in the heating vent and saw three layers of sub floor, but it could have just been a case of ceramic tile prep overkill. What's extra fun about removing ceramic tile is that the boards they sit on are screwed in, and the grout (cement-type stuff they use to stick the tile down and fill the gaps with) covers all the screw heads so you can't see them.

You get to wail on them with a sledge hammer and break apart the hardened grout layer and THEN unscrew the boards the best you can. When we got half-way we used a shovel and pry bar to pop the board off. Have you ever tried to lift your house with a shovel? I thought at one point I was going to go through the floor! Wood screws in 4 inch square bunches are pretty immovable. Then we got to do it again for the second one underneath!

The most fun was at the start of the project, where you use a demo hammer to obliterate the existing tiles. Makes for a lot of dust and crap!

Hours later, with a new sub floor installed.. It looked like the picture above.

Actually. The whole house kinda looks like this now. The kids think "Hardwood floor" is actually that plywood crap that goes underneath. The toilet in the dining room however, is a big hit.