March 8th

Every day that I wake up, my hands are stiff.   I usually spend the first 3-5 minutes of every day stretching my fingers.  Locking them together and pulling, then pushing them together in a praying look, then clenching and unclenching.   It’s a morning ritual.  My hands are so tired, I cant start my day without this.   I can guarantee that tomorrow will be a 10 minute stretch.  

I worked mostly on tile today.   First, I went out and bought everything that was needed.  128sqft = about $200 worth of stuff including tools.  

Then I went to work on taking up the remainder of the old floor.  I use a scraper bit in the sawzall, but it kicks back a lot and feels like you’re operating a jackhammer.  

Then I assembled the wet-saw.  Took more than an hour.   Once that was done, I made my first few cuts and arranged tiles where they’d have to go.  You can make some AMAZING cuts with one of these. 

Then I mixed up the mortar.  This needs to be mixed to the consistency of peanut butter.   Imagine taking a stick and stirring a 5 gallon jar of peanut butter for 15 minutes.  I was truly exhausted.  I WILL buy a mixer for tomorrow.  A drill-bit mixer adapter is only about $15.  

Then I laid all the tiles I could with the mortar I had.   It was dark and my tile saw was outside so I just laid what I could without making cuts, hence the weird layout.