Sunday, September 04, 2011
Some Success!
My goal through the holiday weekend was to remove the tiles from my office. In my arsenal of tolls I have a scraper, heat gun, chisel, and hammer. I had heard this job can be a real bear so I wanted to give my plenty of time to complete it (and take breaks as to not lose my sanity).
I was able to get it mostly done, save for some cleanup around the baseboards and the closet area (which is more because I have stuff I'm too lazy to move. I also still have tomorrow. The plan is to pick up a product called Bean-e-doo (it's made from soybeans) on Tuesday as it will turn all of the black mastic into oily goo. From then, it's time to degrease and clean. Finally after that I can explore some surface treatment options. Here's a closeup:
In my case it went pretty well. Some tiles came up a lot easier than others and I learned there are definitely some subtleties to proper flooring scraper technique. Fortunately, there was only one spot with about 8 tiles that required me sitting on the floor with a chisel and hammer.
As for surface treatments, right now I'm leaning towards a satin finish acrylic sealer. I think the "wet look" epoxy will be a little too much and I'm worried about stripping it later if I don't like it.
# posted by Stephen @ 11:55 PM 
