Diane
has been the one to remove most all of the tile. I have done some, but she's done
probably 90% of it.
The kitchen tile came very easily, due to the fact that
the tile installers way-back-when
didn't want to clean up old linoleum adhesive,
so the tiles never really stuck very well.
She was pulling it up faster than I
could haul it away.
This
was the trickier part of the kitchen floor: Getting that black adhesive up!
I
can't blame those old installers on this one! I had to use a very caustic chemical,
working
with one small patch at a time.
It took several weekends to get it all up.
It was about this time that we discovered
that the floor in the kitchen is a mess. There is one large crack that we cannot
overlook. Plus, there are several anchor-holes in the concrete from where the breakfast
bar was attached. And, the doorway threshhold to the outside porch is just cut-off
and exposed block and mortar, not the same nice light-brown concrete. That door was
cut into the wall after the house was built; it is not original.
So we decided
to investigate resurfacing the floor. Mom had given me an article cut from the newspaper
from earlier in the summer about doing just that. It seem like the way to go. But
if we're going to do that, let's fix ALL the floors in the house!
So ALL the TILE has to go!
Fortunately,
the laundry had the same black stuff, making most
of the tile removal easy, except
under the washer and dryer.
From the laundry, Diane decided to move
to the front entry hall....
This
tile is stuck pretty good, so I went and bought an air-hammer for my
air compressor.
This thing works great!
Diane came up with some techniques for getting the tile
to come up pretty fast.
This
picture was taken October 13, and most of the tile is up, and the floors are mostly
clean.
We just have the majority of the center hallway left.
You can see
the crack in the floor this picture.
And in case you were wondering...
This
is our temporary kitchen. The stainless table is directly behind the shelving, on
the
living room side. At this point, we still have the use of our refrigerator
and range in the kitchen.
That all as of 10/13/05.
UPDATE: 1/28/2006
This is one
possible plan for the kitchen: 
It
involves moving a doorway (to the hallway), but we both like this design so far...
The square in the middle is a 3'x3' butcher block island.