marg, please don't take my comments to be an endorsement of laser levels for the types of work needed for landscape design. Nor do I want to discourage it either. Gee, marcinde, I thought I was close to the end. Now I need to tell folks how you use the rod, why it can work with some equipment and not with other gear, and the possible impact to accuracy. I have spent some time here talking about issues of precision. Yet landscaping has few places where precision has an impact on the project. Seldom will it matter if the elevation is in error of 0.1 ft. But if you aspire to be involved with upscale projects or commercial properties, you are going to be working with engineers and architects. You might want to understand the standands of precision they use. Look at it like this ... sometimes you may be the first one the client hires. If it developes that the client wants a feature that requires an engineer or architect, and there is one you have worked well with before, that is a guy you will recommend. The same thing applies if they are the first one hired. Learn how to make your work product compatible to theirs. There are good engineers and architects and some that precision will be wasted on. The latter tend to have projects full of change orders, cost overruns, and enough blame to spread around. This is a subject that deserves its own thread. Earlier I said I was leaving some things out. The method I think marcinde uses to make high rods shots easy was one of them. Everyone has heard the old saying "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream." There is an old rule of surveying that says don't change rods in the middle of taking levels. What marcinde suggests violates that rule, but with care you can get away with doing it. It is novel that you can use a saw to cut a half foot off the bottom of a level rod and still use it. If ALL of the shots are made with the same cut off rod there will be no impact to the precision of the work. Most tall rods are made in sections that telescope into one another. As each section is raised there is a locking feature that keeps the face rule a continuation of the one below it. If all shots are taken to this face rule it will not mater if the zero point of the scale is not at the exact bottom of the rod. On the backside of the rod is another rule. It is upside down beginning at the second rod segment and is read relative to the first segment. The rule is designed to indicate the total height the rod is extended. Making some shots to the face rule and other shots using the backside is the same as using different rods. Most new rods will have a close compatabilty of the two faces causing only small errors in the work. If the plastic foot of the rod becomes worn or lost the error increases. Any error from this source is systematic and builds up with each new location of the base unit. The basic use of the bachside rule is done in the following way. The receiver is moved to the very top of the rod so that the reading point on the bracket aligns with the top surface. There are a multitude of different brackets made for receivers and rods. It may not be possible to lock the receiver at the top with some brackets. Keep in mind if the bracket comes loose and the receiver falls on to pavement you will probably be buying a new one. To make a high shot, the lock is disengaged between the first and second rod segments and the second one is allowed to telescope into the first until the the reciever is on beam. The backside rule is read and subtracted from the HI in the usual way to get the elevation. It is a fast easy way to make high rod shots. Below is a photo of the backside with the rod lowered in making a shot. The reading is 14.32 I would suggest that before using this method that one check for errors. Set the base unit up on a slope and select a downhill object to shoot where the beam will be high up on the rod. Set the receiver to fine precision. Use the backside rule proceedure first and make the backside reading. Then raise all the rod sections to a locked position and set the receiver using the face rule at the same value as the backside reading. When you stand the rod back on the mark the receiver should be on beam.

Aluminum should not be in constant contact with water or a water retaining material like brick because it has little resistance to galvanic action. It has additional problems with cement mortar. It is only appropriate for flashing when the exposure is small and drainage is good. Special coatings may allow it to last longer but they increase the cost. In this case you need to slope the top course as much as possible (or install a cast stone or copper coping) and install flashing below that course to limit the amount of water that gets into the cavity (unless the flashing at the floor line is adequate for that purpose). Such a short brick wall can't follow any conventional flashing solution. A minimum treatment would be copper "L" flashing starting under the house wrap and sitting on the top brick course projecting as far out and down as you can afford. There would a direct trade off between the amount of exposed copper and the steepness of the slope. I suppose you could also consider an oversized "watertable" sitting on the top of the brick as if this was a wood framed structure sitting on a brick foundation but perhaps the windows would look strange. It's a tough detailing problem. Historically brick usually stops at the bottom of floor framing to avoid these issues.

Well, I'm sorry to say there aren't any tricks. In my experience, there are 2 issues: paneling and lead. Why did they put up paneling- i.e. to hide bad plaster The plaster WILL come down with the removal of the paneling. Our PO swore that the plaster was in perfect shape when he put it up....even though the first time I tried to hang a picture I could hear the plaster rain down in the wall!!! Lead Although I do not reccommend this, I took down all the plaster and paneling myself without reguard to lead- I must say when I did it, I didn't think ahead enough about the lead factor- stupid I realize- I too was pregnant and recovering from an appendectomy when I started. Dumb, dumb, dumb. My Guardian Angel must've been watching over us. In hindsight and after talking to the Health Dept. about lead I think the lead was fairly inert. The lead paint had been sealed with many years of latex and sealed in between plaster and paneling (it came down in huge sandwiches- plaster, wall paper, paint, more wallpaper, paint and paneling). I cleaned after every tear down, got it out of the house the same day and left the carpet down to control dust and then the following day removed carpet and wet cleaned ALL the time. I also isolated every room and wet cleaned and wet cleaned and wet cleaned. Can you tell I'm obsessive compulsive? I also wore paper masks.... That's my story, now that I know what to do, I wouldn't have done it myself- too late for that now. Have a crew come in and gut the whole thing, isolating the space with plastic. Wear a mask and wet clean, wet clean and wet clean everywhere else in the house- no matter how careful you are, it will still sift everywhere. WET CLEAN Take care, give the baby a rub! and don't do it yourself. Love! Heather

@thatsmuchbetter @klem1 This wasn't about shopping for a certain price point at all. I wasn't looking to hire cheap, I was looking to hire "good". That being said, this is a small 1940's cottage, not Versailles we are talking about. I hired a contractor who seemed capable of doing a good job and ended up with a bit of a mess on my hands. I have since had two professional tile installers (both with good references, etc.) come out and tell me two different ways in which they would fix this problem. One said remove and start over, the other said tile over it. Hence, my reason for asking Houzz's opinion. I appreciate what both of you have offered. I feel confident now that the floor "should" be removed and I know that I will feel much better having a separate tile installer do the job, instead of letting the original contractor attempt to re-do it.