It's Raining Styrofoam

My intention with this blog was to chronicle the demolition of our house as it happened. Unfortunately, I underestimated how much time would go into said demolition, and how unwilling I would be to stay wake long enough to write about it when I got home. That's why now that we're no longer working every evening, I am taking the time to reflect on what has happened so far and attempt to catch up to the present.
At one point, we decided the mock wood Styrofoam beams running across the ceiling needed to go, and without further ado, Tony raised the sledgehammer over his head and knocked free the first beam, which fell to the floor, sending black pieces of dust everywhere, and leaving two nasty streaks of black on the ceiling where the beam had been glued.
Several days later, it became my job to attempt to remove the glue remnants from the ceiling by climbing up the world's ricketiest ladder and scraping above my head with a tool that did nothing. Tony was sure that Goo Gone would remove the glue, so I headed to the hardware store and bought some, along with a 2" paint scraper, which looked menacing.
I returned and found that the Goo Gone did indeed remove the glue, but not before making a tar-y, sticky mess, which oozed all over the ceiling and dropped onto one of my favorite t-shirts.
Don't ask me why I was wearing that shirt for demolition. It made sense when I got dressed that morning.
So I abandoned the Goo Gone mess, and slowly worked at scraping the glue from the ceiling, which showered seemingly millions of pounds of dust into my face, nose, hair and eyes. Since I'm a bit squirmish about "being uncomfortable", I refused to wear a face mask, because they make me sweat. As for goggles, I can't see as clearly, so I threw those on the floor. The result was the black dust got in my nose (and presumably my lungs-- not so great, since it's probably toxic) and in my eyes, under my contacts. The ladder didn't help either-- I had to balance myself properly and hold one hand on the ceiling, which took away from the strength I needed to scrape. Besides, my foot still hurt from injuring it while busting up tile and I quickly became cranky.
Tony was not so accepting of my cranky behavior, and sent me back the next day to finish my job. Tony doesn't complain. Let me rephrase that. Tony doesn't complain so much as he likes to be honored for doing a good job. He will comment that something was hard work, but only because he likes to know that he's doing a good job. He'll probably read this and take offense, but really, I'm not being insulting.
Back to the point. Even though I whined about my job, he did stop over halfway through the day and helped me scrape the rest of the crap from the ceiling, which was nice.
When I got home, I had black scratchy dust in my bra, my bellybutton, my ears, and all sorts of places. It took me three days to get the black stuff out of my hair. I never want to do that again.

Empty Rooms With Promise

The kitchen floor was made from asbestos tile, which was common at the time that this house was built. When I heard that we would be removing such a large area of dangerous material, I was afraid for both myself and Tony. I had heard of asbestos poisoning, and I didn't want either of us to die before we could enjoy our home. However, due to budget constraints, we decided to remove it anyway.
Tony and I got to work, wearing masks and goggles, picking at the edges of the tile with putty knives and prying up small sections of easily breakable tile. After a half hour, our efforts had yielded maybe a two foot square of space of broken tile. Tony was getting exasperated, and decided to use an outdoor ice shovel to break up the tile and scrape it from the floor. It didn't work very well, so he took it downstairs and sharpened it. That worked a bit better, but still it seemed we were getting nowhere.
Since there was only one tool, he sent me to search the yellow pages until I found a gas station that sold dry ice. He had read that by freezing the tile, it would cause the glue underneath to give far easier, making it easier to scrape away the tile. I drove a half hour each way to the gas station, which was just south of Miller Park, and picked up forty dollars worth of dry ice. I drove back to the house, armed with ice and Gatorade, for which Tony was grateful.
Once the ice was placed on the tile, it became far easier to scrape from the floor. The problem was that as Tony chipped away at the tile, it shattered, and the ice went flying with it, in every direction. I followed chunks of ice around the kitchen and pushed them back toward Tony, who would then chip up more tile, and I would chase after it again. It sounds like more fun than it was.
It was a warm day, and the ice was melting fast. We couldn't turn on the air conditioning, because the tile would fall into the vents-- which were blocked off-- so poor Tony worked non stop, sweat pouring over his face and fogging up his glasses.
Before long, he sent me back to the gas station for more dry ice. This time I bought sixty dollars worth, and lugged it back home with me. By the time I got home, Tony had presumably lost it, and had wreaked havoc on the kitchen tile. Three quarters of the tile was gone, and he stood, panting, covered in sweat, wielding his weapon and looking like a madman. I mostly stayed out of his way while he chipped away at the rest of the tile, busying myself with other tasks.
When he finished and was fed, he was proud of the work accomplished for the day, and was optimistic about the floor we still had to chip off in the dining room. This tile was peeling up at the corners, and looked to be far thinner than the previous tile. We both went home that day, knowing we had work ahead of us, but anticipating that it would be a walk in the park compared to what we had done in the kitchen.
We were wrong.
The dining room took two days and was a horrible mess. The tar used underneath the tiles was still sticky, and would cause any broken tile to readhere to it almost immediately. In addition, the thinner material made it more difficult to use the tool to get underneath the tile. Some of the ice had melted from the day before, but what was left wasn't doing us any good.
Tony's grandpa stopped over halfway through the day and watched us. He didn't have anything to contribute, so he left. He returned about an hour later, with a tool especially designed for tile removal. Tony tried using it, while I used the old scraper. It worked much easier, but also gouged the floor below, which we were attempting to salvage, which only made Tony more and more angry. He began swearing to himself, then commenting to me how useless the tool was, and becoming more and more upset. In addition, the tile and gunk got caught in it and bent the blade. After several attempts to clean the blade, the screws holding it were stripped, so in a fit of rage, Tony took it outside and smashed it to pieces.
"Look what I did," he said. I was busy gathering tile to take outside, so I didn't look up immediately. "Look Lynn," he sounded a bit like a child, eager to show me his new discovery. I looked up at him where he stood near the door, a hint of a smile on his lips and danger in his eyes, carying the smashed tool.
"That's nice." I said, going back to the tile.
I can't remember if it was before or after this incident that I told him he scared me when he acted like that. My words seemed to have a calming effect, but I can't be sure if he was only doing that to pacify me, or because he realized that he probably shouldn't be scaring his girlfriend over a malfunctioning tool.
It took us two days to remove the dining room floor.
I removed the tile in the small bathroom (Tony refers to it as the "powder room") by myself, using a sledgehammer and a small putty knife. I had started on it in the morning before Tony arived, and I had hoped to have it done by the time he got there, since the area was really only about 4x5 feet. Instead, it took me all day. The tile was thick, and although it broke apart when smashed with the sledgehammer, I had to take care not to ruin the subfloor. There was also very little room to turn around in that area, so I was left squatting in odd positions, chipping away at dusty tile, sweat pouring down my face. When I finally finished, however, I was extremely proud of myself. I've pointed out that I removed that tile to everyone who has set foot in the door.