We'd gotten the tile up, but still had the thin set underneath to deal with. While there were definitely some corners cut by the construction crew who built our house, whoever laid the tile did an excellent job and that cement was just about impossible to get up.
We had had enough working with wimpy tools, so we got the kids off to school then went to Sunbelt Rentals for an industrial grinder. We couldn't have gotten the double headed one in and out of the truck ourselves, so we had to go with the single head. We were feeling optimistic and hoped the day's work would go quickly and be easier on our bodies. Alas.
The grinder worked, but was more of a finishing tool and took easily four times longer than Matthew with the demo tool. We decided that he'd chip up as much as he could with the demo tool, then I'd follow with the grinder to smooth everything out. That worked fine, until the demo tool broke. Matthew was able to exchange it, but the new one turned out to be broken in the box. We returned that one and got our money back, but still needed a way to chip out all that thin set, and we were on the clock as we only had the grinder for 24 hours and really didn't want to pay to rent it for a second day. We went back to Home Depot and got a big scraper machine, but while it was certainly beefy and easy to use, it didn't have the right weight distribution to get under the thin set. We were able to return it half an hour later without incurring a fee and instead went for a step up in the demolition tool family. This one was even heavier and even harder for Matthew to use, but it did the job. We were up again past 11 pm, Matthew using the power tool and me shoveling behind him. Unfortunately, one of the blades on the grinder tool broke off, so even if he could have gotten all the thin set up last night, we still couldn't have finished the job.
Matthew went first thing this morning to Sunbelt to get new blades and see if they'd give us an extension on the tool. They were super nice and said we could keep it the rest of the day. Matthew's hands, arms, and back were killing him, but he plowed through and got the remainder of the thin set up in record time. After cleaning up the debris, I spent a couple hours running the grinder to smooth everything out. We finished just as the kids got home from school and Matthew was able to return the tools before closing time. We cleaned up and took the rest of the evening relatively easy.
In hind sight, we probably should have used the Home Depot demo tool we rented on the first night to get up as much tile as possible instead of trying to deal with thin set and making everything smooth. We should have maybe gotten a new cart, or a demo tool one size smaller then to get the thin set up. I don't think we regret the grinding machine as it really did make for a nice finish. Despite all the different tools we either bought and returned or rented, we only ended up paying for the grinder and the final Home Depot demo tool. That still came to roughly $300, but taking into account all the tools we went through, it could have easily been much more. Even though set back after set back made us feel like the task was taking us forever, considering the square footage (about 800), it was a roughly four day job that took us roughly four days. We really felt like the hand of the Lord was over us, helping and sustaining us, and we are grateful to have this particular project behind us.
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