The Wall

This weekend we continued work on the backsplash wall (and again, "we" = "Dave")... The next step in this process is to smooth or remove the ancient chunky adhesive that held the previous tiles to the wall. This is a chore. Our original plan was to simply sand it to smooth. So we bought an orbital sander (under the assumption that this will come in handy for other projects as well, so not a loss if this doesn't work)...

...it didn't really work. We thought about patching it smooth...

 ...this sort of worked, but no, not really...

So Dave went to the hardware store (photo of chunky adhesive-covered wall in tow) to get some professional opinions. The five people working at the Ace he went to each had a different idea - and each debunked the idea of the guy before him. At the end of it, Dave bought only a scraper, and is attacking the wall himself... 

(It must be noted that at a certain point in this process, I came into the kitchen to find Dave wearing the best science lab-protective glasses ever, but he wouldn't let me take a photo...)

If this effort didn't work, we planned to contact our kitchen contractor and simply have him re-dry wall the chunky-glued area... however, after a few hours, we're half way there:

The plan is to finish the scraping, patch where needed, sand smooth, and then move onto tile selection and application.


It continues...