The Shop Floor: Introduction

enemy (n):
1. One who feels hatred toward, intends injury to, or opposes the interests of another; a foe
2. Something destructive or injurious in its effects

                                                                              - The American Heritage Dictionary

    The shop floor is my nemesis, plain and simple.  I hate it and it hates me.  As one of the requirements of the State of Wisconsin to operate a tattoo parlor, there has to be a hard surfaced floor.  Carpeting is not allowed.  So I decided that to save money and in the spirit of fixing and improving my own home, I decided that I would lie a ceramic tile floor in the basement.  In the sense that a nemesis is one who feels hatred toward or intends injury to something, I am the nemesis of the floor because I want to break it all and I hate it every time I see it.  In the sense that is it destructive and injurious in its effects it is my nemesis because it haunts me day and night and every time I go down there.
     Now granted, I spent a lot of time, effort, and frustration over the course of many days getting a little more intimate with the floor than I would have liked to, so I tend to look at it with an overly critical eye.  I look at the floor and see every flaw, and I am sure Traci does too, and I am sure you would if you installed tile for a living, or you were looking at buying the house (which won't happen - I won't allow that house to be sold with that floor in the basement), or maybe if you were just a jerko you might notice the same things, but most of the people who come through there aren't looking at the floor, and the ones who are seem to say that it looks just fine.
    In truth, I was in a little over my head on this project.  But I learned a ton in the process, and with what I know now I would do it over for sure, or do it again in another room for sure.  But we will get into that later.  For now we will just go through the process of how I went about it (with help from my Dad since he was unfortunate enough to offer) and then at the end we can talk about what I learned and what advice I would give.  But for now we should just start at the beginning, and that beginning is with removing the carpet.