Evidently, whoever originally hired drywall installers and painters for this house made the cost-saving choice of bringing in a crew of rabid baboons, in size twelve boots. This crew had managed to spill, spatter, and track around such a large amount of their material on the cement floor of the living room that the earth's axis is measurably tilted towards our home.

Since we cannot nail down our new flooring, and it's not a floating system, it must be adhered with an adhesive. The manufacturer's instructions call for a level, clean substrate. With Mount Drywall Compound  and the High Plains of Paint-splat, our floor is neither. So, out come the knee-pads and a scraper for an after-work evening of blood-pumping exercise. I attacked it with gusto, wanting to lay flooring the next morning. Chips of paint and a cloud of dry wall dust filled the room. Progress was sloooooow. My sweaty shoulders and arms screamed for mercy within minutes.

Aching shoulders? Wasn't muscle-staining, back-breaking manual labor the reason Noah invented power tools to build the Ark? I grabbed the random orbital sander, some nice 60 grit paper, and my dust collector from the garage. Tim "The Toolman" Taylor would be proud. MORE POWER!!

Now we're cooking! With the extra ports open on the dust collector, the room was quickly dust free. I was tearing the mountain down, with bits of debris flying off the floor. Bit of debris? No problem,.. MORE POWER!!! 

Wooo hoo!!! This is the way to do it! Power sander! Dust Collector! 6 HP wet dry vac!  (...plus, lighting, a television, two cable boxes, some kitchen appliances, and a front yard full of blazing Christmas light glory).

You guessed it, judgement was soon passed down upon me by a mighty 15 amp circuit breaker, plunging me into inky-black silence.

The mountain was sanded down. It was well adhered, so I wasn't concerned about it pulling up. Without my triumvirate of roaring-loud mechanical terrors to stress the Southwest's electrical grid, I brought in the ultimate power tool to help scrape up the stay spots around the room. This custom-built, 40 lb., high-energy powerhouse runs on a seemingly unending cordless power supply. 

With the floor finally scraped clean enough, she turned her mighty DIY Girl skills to prying chunks of plaster from under the wall edge with a pair of Linesmen pliers.

No matter that daddy said we didn't need to do it, once this dynamo got working, there was no off switch,... at least until lured away with the promise of a bowl of ice cream.

Next up, the floor goes down.

Catch up on this whole project, AZ DIY Guy's Living Room Remodel: