Remodeling sucks

Yes, I said it. I know i'll be incredibly happy when it's done, and i'm a staunch DIYer, but this bathroom is just killing me. It started out incredibly well. Removing the baseboards and the toilet and painting the walls was easy. Unfortunately, when I finished painting the walls, the color didn't look nearly as good as I was envisioning, and I was worried that I'd be repainting soon. Nevertheless, I pressed on. Repainting the cabinets was much harder than I expected. The paint began to peel off when I removed the cabinet hardware, and I knew I'd have to remove all of it before continuing. Removing the paint took a really, really long time. But it was all worth it, because the cabinets look fantastic and the color combination makes the walls look good too.

Then it came time to do the floor. It didn't take too long to remove the old laminate, which was badly damaged where the toilet had been. I smashed my thumb in the process, but that was no big deal. But when I pulled up the plastic underlayment, I noticed that the concrete had been painted. I quickly searched online and discovered that the paint would have to be removed before tile could be laid down. I grabbed a scraper and set to work, but it was extremely slow going, so I headed over to home depot (my second home these days) and bought a paint stripper attachment for my drill. While it did work with only a little less effort than scraping by hand, it also created a ton of dust and made me start worrying that I was going to overheat the motor in the drill. Also, it was extremely slow going, and by that point I was exhausted, so I gave up for the evening.

This evening, I will probably head back to home depot (again) and try to find some sort of chemical stripping agent. Hopefully I'll be able to get that done tonight so I can get the tile laid tomorrow and grout on Thursday night, so that Friday I can install baseboard and maybe even get the toilet put back. After that, all I have to do is install towel bars. Yay! I can't wait to see what it's going to look like, if I manage to survive that long. Wish me luck!