Floor Prep and Tile Layout

This is a floor scraper:


Because there is no size reference, I'll tell you that the blade is 14 inches wide. It's a thin piece of flexible metal -think razor blade- on a long, simple pipe handle.
It's a wonderful, back-saving tool and I wish I would have known about it a lot sooner.
I have spent several hours on my hands and knees with a hammer and small chisel to remove the old adhesive from the floor. And it's not just me - all three kids have put in time chiseling, too. That's a lot of time.
And then I found this floor scraper. (Duh.)
It works great, scrapes up everything in seconds and shows me all the imperfections that I have to fix either before (convex - hammer, chisel) or while (concave - concrete) tiling.

Clean floor - at last:


I wanted to start my tile from the front door - or rather, I wanted to measure out from the front door so everything ends up square and uniform at the entrance:


Looking closer, you can see my perpendicular starting lines:


Laying out tools, tile, and a water bucket with rags:


And then it was outside to mix mud (yep, I got pictures of that, too, but I'm just doing a quick catch up with blogs before getting back to work)....