I am helpig (e:matthew) fullfill his dream of slowly restoring everything to its original state. I draw the line at the kitchen. Luckily, our house was pretty modern for its time. For example, it had bathrooms.

It all started with this small hint that it was really tile underneith. I started to excavate a bit and then thought I should look online to see if it is asbestos, considering how much vinyl tile is. Then I discovered it was asbestos. I clearly found the exact print in the 1965 Armstrong Excelon vinyl asbestos floor tile catalog



Here it is



First we had to get the toilet up.


I shaved so my mask would fit snugly. Here I am half done.


Then I dressed up in my space suit and covered everything in myspace format.




Then I taped myself in the room so no air could get out.

I learned everything I could about asbestos tile removal and decided to try it myself. It is not that dangerous as it is not very dusty at all. THe vinyl holds the asbestos in and it comes up in chunks. The secret was to use a waster mister and lots of wet newspaper on top while prying it up.

Turned out it made no dust as everything was soaking wet. The problem was the tar under the tiles was so sticky that it made the tiles so hard to remove.

Here I am after I got only a couple tiles up.



I think it is going to take a few weeks to finish. I am going to try tomorrow with dry ice. I here it makes the glue freeze up and let go of the tile.

To make life more fun, there is a drip in the basement going to one of the water spouts outside and it has no shutoff so we before the drip. So basically we have to turn off all the water to fix it, argh.



After I discovered it we ended up using the box to hold it until we can fix it tomorrow.

Home depot has this new low VOC lung and earth friendly paint line. I
would probably use this for everything from now on but $35/gallon is
kind of steep considering I don't know if it works well or not. They
should have a cheaper introductory price so you could test it. The
color selection is great.

Anyone down for a bbq on sunday at the 24? (e:southernyankee) is in town and we thought being memorial day weekend and all it might be a good time to have a bbq?

(E:enknot) and I went to wasabi on elmwood for lunch the other day. We
both got the sushi/sashimi lunch for $12. It comes with lots of fish
and 6 crunchy crab peices. I also ordered some octopus and the sales
girl upsild us on some toro (fatty tuna) which brought my total closer
to $20 which is redox for lunch but it's also rare we eat sushi of
that caliber.