Ding! Dong! The Carpet is Gone!

Can you believe I'm posting twice in one week?!? One week into summer break and I've just got a small case of cabin fever.

So, onto today's post. THE CARPET IS GONE! All the nasty, dingy, staple-filled, wall-to-wall carpet (that Grandmother was so proud of) has been ripped out of the house. Underneath are beautiful oak floors full of staples and just waiting for someone to love them. Everytime we mention to Grandmother how beautiful the wood floors are she just stares at us and says, "I don't understand why you would want those old wood floors. They aren't even very good quality. I just loved my wall-to-wall carpeting." She views the wood floors as "working class floors." I have to remember that 50 years ago almost everyone had wood floors and wall-to-wall carpet was the ideal.

But carpet just kind of grosses me out. Maybe its because I have a toddler, two dogs, and a cat but I just can't help thinking of all the little microrganisms breeding under the surface of carpeting. They just never seem clean to me. I can vacuum every day and carpet scrub once a month and I still feel like it's just dirty.

Anyway, we ripped carpet out of the living room, dining room, two bedrooms, and the hallway. I feel so much better about the entire space. It was the end of the day and we just wanted to get it over with so we just started ripping and rolling. You've heard me complain about the staples in the living room, dining room and one of the bedrooms. Well they continued through the hallway. When we got into the back bedroom, however, the carpet changed from beige to blue. And guess what...no really...guess...oh all right I'll tell you, better yet, I'll show you.

Instead of that nasty composite foam stuff, there was this. Equally nasty but not stapled down to the floor (insert squeal of excitement). I'm guessing it was once foamy and cushiony but now it is brittle and flat. It was just laying on the floor like that. We were able to just pick it up and neatly roll it inside the carpet.

And here's what we were left with...

Ahh...



Crack House

So, finally, after months of waiting, waiting, waiting, and more waiting, things finally seem to be back on track. I took a few "before" pictures today. I'm going to try to start posting them so that everyone can see the "progress" that is happening.

Below is what went down today. I totally intended just to hang out and take a few pics today (maybe pull up a little carpet and marvel at the beautiful wood floors) and yet somehow ended up not only ripping out carpet but also wallpaper too.

This room is pretty scary. The wallpaper was coming down pretty easily but behind the wallpaper...oh, behind that wallpaper. Behind that wallpaper was a complete mess. I'm going to try to describe this the best way I know how. Someone (probably 60 years ago) decided to paint this room pink. Then, this person decided to hang wallpaper over that pink plaster...brown wallpaper with little red flowers all over it. (It was pretty gross.) Joe's Grandad made the wise choice to remove that wallpaper and Joe's Grandmother selected the country blue wallpaper you see above. 

Now, I had no intention of removing this wallpaper today. It was more curiosity than anything. I kept wondering, "What is behind that wallpaper? What is behind that wallpaper?" So finally, I grabbed a piece of loose wallpaper and just ripped. Amazingly, it tore all the way up to the ceiling without shredding. So I grabbed another piece and ripped that one off all the way to the ceiling as well. Everything after that is a haze of flying wallpaper and plaster. And yes, that is my dad standing there supervising. He "supervised" almost the entire process.

After the wallpaper frenzy and I was able to focus again, I finally took a step back and shrieked in horror. There were cracks everywhere. Im not sure these pics show it in great detail but it literally looks like a crack house. This room will haunt me in my sleep. In fact, I thought about calling up the producers of the SAW movies and letting them know that they could rent out this room to film their next movie.

Good news though, I did eventually end up tearing up the carpet. You can't tell from this pic but the floors are beautiful. I don't know why Joe decided to take a pic of the carpet pile instead of focusing on the actual floors but this seems to be the only one I have. We have beautiful floors with staples all through them--which reminds me...beer and staple party at my house next weekend!!!