The entire main floor of the house had wall-to-wall textured carpet from the early 80s is my guess. It was everywhere and emoted a pungent smell of someone else's life (and dog). It had to go. So we bought contractor bags, work gloves, masks, a mass quantity of razor blades and our first shop vac. I've always wanted a shop vac of my own, ever since I spent a summer vacuuming my parent's leaky basement, wild teen that I was. Anyway, it looked like this:
The foyer...
Looking from the foyer into the living room. We'll get to that paneling later.
The dining room. Want to bet there was once a built-in cabinet where that useless closet currently resides? I smell the Alameda Flea Market for a hunt.
And this is the hallway dividing the two bedrooms (also carpeted), the bathroom and two hall closets. Hey, that's a lot of doors!Overall the process was arduous, but getting the carpet itself up was a breeze. Slice, roll, put it in the pile.
Some of the padding chose to stick to the wood and I knew that would be a party cleaning it up. The worst part was the staples and tack strips. I sprained my finger. But whatever, we had wood floors and they aren't in bad shape! Sure, the finish is worn away in traffic areas, there are some pet stains, water stains, gouges, but all in all, quite lovely. And it's starting to smell better in here!
The house has an addition which leads to the basement. It's bonus space and righteous and perfect for our work-at-home lifestyle. But it had carpet too, of course. And when we pulled it back...
ants!!! Gross, gross, more than words. They came out like an explosion and swarmed the entire perimeter. I screamed, flailed my arms about and split. We ran out for bug spray and destroyed, successfully. The floor here is concrete and the room needs a lot of work. But that's later. For now, let's waddle in the glory, shall we?
