I had been using a hammer and a flat-head screwdriver to chisel of the mortar. This worked, but it was painfully slow, and I kept hitting my own hand with a hammer (I know...not very surprising).
So, this past Saturday I decided to go find the right tool for the job. And what I found was perfect. A chisel with a 3" head and a guard so that you don't hit your hand! (Which tells me I must not be the only one who had that issue!) It was $10 at Home Depot.
So I start chiseling away, really excited because the new chisel worked way faster.I cleaned off one tile completely and started on the second one when this happened:
Yup, that tile that I so carefully lifted off the floor in one piece cracked right in half. Ugh. I said to myself "I'll just have to buy a new one and use it for the tile that's right under the door, so it's not as noticeable". I also decided that the reason it cracked was because I was working on a bad surface. You can see in the picture that our back patio is all gravely (is that a word?) instead of being flat. So for the next tile I moved to the driveway in a patch that was nice and flat. Guess what happened? CRACK. And the next one? CRACK.
This is the part where I growled in frustration and gave up. I'm going to have to go out and actually buy new tile, which means I now have to go from tile shop to tile shop looking for something that matches. And even if I find the exact same tile, it will still be shiny and new and will stick out like a sore thumb. But that's the DIY life, sometimes you win and other times you fail miserably. The frustrating part is I feel like if I'd have kept at it with my little flat-head screwdriver then I'd have been fine. I think it was the chisel's larger head that distributed the force in a broader area that caused the problem. But I'm not an engineer, just a frustrated DIYer.
This project is continued in part 3, part 4 and part 5.
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