And today, taking up the floor tiles
Start of job:
http://i.imgur.com/Tx07oTVl.jpg
6 hours later:
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qep6s19l.jpg
56 tiles done, another 118 to go. Bit of a nightmare of a job, to be honest. The tiles come up easy enough with the SDS chisel, but getting the cement up off the concrete floor is a right pain. More so in some areas (near the fireplace :mad: ) than others - was getting the friendlier tiles done in about 5 minutes each, the difficults ones were about 15 minutes each.[/QUOTE]
finished this at the weekend. 17 hours in total it took to get those tiles up (so about 6 minutes a tile). The last 70 or so were a bit quicker as they were laid on top of an old smooth red set of tiles so much of the tile cement came up with the tiles. Did those in about 4 hours. The old tiles are staying in place, as they're fairly level with the concrete on the other side of the room.
In the meantime, we had plasterers in. After stripping off the lower meter of plaster back to brickwork, they injected some damp-proofing into the walls to ward of the rising damp we were suffering in the half of the room near the fireplace. It all got a fresh plaster/skim on that half, including in the fireplace, and around the mantle I put in last week.
Next, need to tank the bits of the floor where there was some damp, and think about whether we need to self-level the floor for wooden flooring to go down (probably solid oak, maybe engineered). Also need to consider whether to take up the existing laminate boards in the hallway (fairly large hallway at ~ 15' x 8') where we're going to lay the new floor right through. Might be better to leave it down.