We are a bunch of Idiots

Ok, so we have our first work day for Sharing Life Ministries in Mesquite, TX for our "Big Project" today and got a lot done. The major task of the day was the removal of the linoleum flooring and the residue under it. Pulling the stuff up was pretty easy, but there was a ton of paper backing and glue that needed to come up before we could even think about laying tile next time.

So out come all of the handy dandy little floor scrapers that not one but TWO tiles guys told us to use. They were emphatic that these little hand held razor blade deelios would do the trick better than anything else. So we worked and scraped and sweated and felt like cussing because we were making very little progress. Very little meaning two people maybe cleared 20 sq ft. in an hour and that is being generous.

A little disclaimer here. I never actually had the privilege of using the above mentioned scraper, I was using a putty knife that had even less of an edge than the scrapers. I digress, around 3:00 or a little later, Sprang decides to change the blade in his scraper. As he removes it (the original blade that came in the scraper) he announces, "Hey guys, these blades were put in backwards for safety, we have been scraping the floor with the dull side all day."

It was one of those moments when every jaw dropped. There were about 10 people there and more than a dozen college degrees represented by those 10 people and we had already spent 30 or so man hours scraping the floor with the dull side of a razor blade. Sprang likened it to playing a guitar with no strings while someone else said it was like painting but forgetting to take the protective cover off the brush. We are a bunch of idiots!

This bunch of idiots did a great deal of work. Once we installed the blades correctly we tore that place up. We seriously could have finished the scraping before lunch if we were not a bunch of idiots. That place is going to look like a million bucks when we are done. Many kudos to Jono and Brad for all the work they did to pull this thing together.