Entryway - Wooden Wedges, Tough Bricks and Mortar

Check out this more-than-a-century-old wedge of wood:

We can't tell what kind of wood it is, but its very dry and, therefore, lightweight.



Here's where they came from:

Can you see that thin line of wood? These wedges were used to even out the courses of brick; they became a part of the wall.
There were none of these showing on the outside, only on the inside where the lathe-and-plaster interior finish would cover them up.



These wedges were here, in the last three courses of brick, the only barrier remaining in the new door opening:


It took four hours of hard work and heavy tools to chip these bottom rows out of here!



It's good to know the old building is so tough.

Floor Tile

We've got quite the impressive mess in the parking lot.
Again.

In the last post I showed you the clean floor - and it's so clean because everything went outside to the parking lot (okay, some went upstairs, but not much).
I'm glad we were able to have a clean parking lot for Mother's Day and Memorial Day, but after that the outside mess multiplied.
It's temporary.

Here's inside looking out through the new door:



To where I was mixing mud:


My trusty drill and mixer blade. The same set-up I used to mix the buckets of drywall mud.




Here's a pretty good start:


I wear knee pads (I haven't thought to take a picture of those, yet), which decreases wear and tear on the knees, but I haven't found anything to help out with the back.
Or the fingers: The concrete dries up my skin and by the time the floor is ready to grout, all the water prunes up my damaged, cracked fingers and produces some pretty odd looking holes.
And the fingernails... let's just say they're looking kinda' rough.


I have more tiling pictures AND I had a brainstorm that really helped me out the other day for piecing in the edges. I'll tell you about that soon.

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)....

Tools