Slowly, Slowly

My mosaic work has been moving at a crawl lately because we're having our foyer retiled.  The foyer is pretty big and is connected to all major gateways through the house.  The guy doing it is awesome, the kind of guy who takes pride in a job well done.  So he takes off the first layer of tile here:

So not only is it just kind of blah, my husband stepped down recently and this happened.  Bad tile job by whoever did it before!

 

So under most of this was just what you want to find, a nice, level layer of plywood.  However, we found this under a big square right in front of the door:

Okay, other than looking burned, this retro tile is kind of cool, but not in my house with all of the retro white carpet.  I'm trying to update here.  So he takes this out - painstaking, long process and finds this:

About 3" of this nasty, crumbly plasterish cement stuff.  Poor guy!!  By now, everything in my house is COVERED in dust.  It's making me crazy.  Even the remote felt gritty.  So he takes this out and finally, plywood.  But this layer is kind of flimsy and my husband and I are tiptoe-ing over it.  It's the only thing between us and the basement floor!

Tomorrow, he's building up this floor to be level with the other and then he will start putting in the new tile!!  I can't wait!!  Sorry for the rant, but it's just hard to create with all the dirt, dust and banging.  I guess this is breaking us in to all the future renos we have planned for this 1973 beauty.