the Angie’s List Blue House Blog

I’m willing to do anything legal to save money. This includes moving in with an old family friend in order to save on rent. Here’s a picture of my good old buddy:

He just swooped up a foreclosure on the Northside of Indianapolis, and I’ll be his roommate. He’s pretty excited. Can you tell?

But there’s a catch to cutting my living expenses in half: I have to help him remodel.

Now this wouldn’t be too much of a problem if my friend was a typical home remodeler and had any common sense about him. But, as stories like these go, he’s not typical and doesn’t have any common sense. The first time we’re in the home, he starts taking out stuff with a hammer. He attacks a wall here, destroys a shelf there — it’s his home, and he can do what he wants, right?

That’s what I initially thought. Until he decided to take that hammer to the kitchen tile.

Words of advice: Going to war with tile is possibly one of the worst DIY decisions anybody can make.

After gripping a hammer and crowbar for the better part of my free time in the past week, my thumbs are locked into an eternal grip, making it impossible to effectively give a thumbs-up to my fellow coworkers.

Ever removed tile? Here’s an example of countertop tile being removed, to give you an idea. Remember: this example is countertop tile, not kitchen floor tile. Kitchen-floor tile requires a longer and more grueling process:

First, you have to destroy the tile. You can either slowly pick at the grout, and then pry the tile up, or you can go medieval on it, smashing it to pieces. My future roommate opted for the latter. Second, you have to remove the pieces of tile and the cement board underneath. Get ready for pain. Typically, cement board is supposed to be glued to a surface; this cement board was nailed with a pattern that made it nearly impossible to pull up. This was the most challenging aspect of the job, and my thumbs wished they were on vacation in Hawaii pushing hotel-elevator buttons instead. To remove the cement board, you have to jam a crowbar underneath and pull, tug, yell and scream until it comes up. Occasionally you slam into a nail, making your whole body shudder like a cartoon character who just slammed into an anvil. Usually, after the cement board has been removed, you’ve reached the subfloor, which means your job is done: it’s time to lay the new tile. But that wasn’t the case with this home. There was a layer of yellow sheet linoleum, and then another layer of green tile linoleum.

So it’s like an adventure. You peel off one layer, thinking you’re close to being done, only to reveal another layer of thumb-destroying material from the 1950s.

This advice comes straight from my two thumbs: When it comes to tile, use the List to find someone to do the job for you.