DIY / GaMI
430 wordsOh boy.
Last Monday, Debbie said “It’s high time we cleaned that living room carpet”. This would involve spending £25 or so on hiring a carpet shampooer, and the effort of moving all the furniture out. “I hate having carpet, it always gets filthy again in no time. Are you sure we can’t have laminate?”
Now, I’d always assumed that the floor under the carpet would be too uneven for laminate, but since we had furniture up, I pulled up some carpet, only to discover some tiling that echoes the tiling in the conservatory. It was rather nice, we agreed, so we decided to get some cleaning products to see if it would shine up.
Alas, on closer inspection, the tiles were stained, scratched vinyl, and there was no way they’d clean up to an acceptable level, but now we had the idea of tiles in our heads. So now we had a project:
- Pull up tiles
- Paint walls
- Opportunistically channel TV and speaker cables in the floor
- GaMI (Get a Man In) to tile the floor
So, most evenings last week we’ve been either painting or gouging up vinyl tiles. Some of the tiles are very stubborn (the secret is to melt the glue with boiling water) and my hands are blistered and aching.
Yesterday, I took a hired wall chaser to the concrete floor. This is basically two angle grinders, which cut a pair of parallel grooves to a set depth. The amount of dust this generates is beyond belief. I assumed my eye mask had steamed up, but when I removed it the visibility was about the same. Fortunately I had taken the tool seriously and worn full eye protection, a dust mask, gloves and earplugs. Also, forewarned about the dust, we had removed everything that mattered from the room.
We had to leave the house for a couple of hours to let the dust settle, but when we returned I had to chisel the concrete from between the grooves. This was fairly quick work, but I had a harder job extending the channels to the wall, which the chaser couldn’t reach. My hands are blistered and aching — not least from missing the chisel with the hammer a couple of times.
… so our living room is now empty, and the floor is tacky with vinyl tile glue, its stickiness only moderated by the concrete dust that’s settled on it. For relaxation we’ve had to use the spare bedroom, watching Family Guy and Monk on a computer screen. Tonight we move enough furniture and electronics back into the room to tide us by until the tiler comes.