Carpet today, gone tomorrow

Delayed Post: June 9-11 2011


H and I knew from the get go that the carpet in the upstairs on the house had.to.go! The whole house had been steam cleaned by the previous owners, but 30+ years of heavy smokers had paid their toll, and the house was holding on to the smell. We probably could have used some special cleaners to get rid of it, but the fact that every room had a different coloured carpet- from light grey, to lime green shag, to forest green. We knew from our house inspection that there were hardwood floors under the carpet, but we had no idea on their condition.... were they covered for a reason? what the beeep are we going to do if they are a hot mess?

 The end of our hallway with the rainbow of flooring, four different colours within a square meter of each other!
We had decided that the green shag had to go, it was old, dirty, and generally beyond it's sell by date.

Yes, this is post steam cleaning- yuk!

We got the keys to the house on the evening of June 8th, and bright and early the next day we were in ripping the carpet up in the 3rd bedroom.... and man was it overdue, not only was the carpet decrepid, but the underlay was litteraly decomposing, crumbling and sticking to the hardwood underneath.

However, we could tell that the floor was in pretty good condition. So, after reviewing the situation the next morning, we agreed that it was buh buy carpet, and the other rooms soon followed.

In order to save some pennies, 'cuz we're two cheapos who don't like paying people to do things that we can do ourselves (aka. couldn't have affored to pay anyone since we were broke from having just bought the house!), we decided to tackle the floor refinishing ourselves.

While the carpet itself was pretty quick to remove, but the staples.... oh, the staples! We spent about 2 full days with my dad on our hands and knees prying and digging out kabillions of staples, it was insane! By the end of each day I had a claw for a hand and wrists, knees and bum that felt broken. I thought it was never.going.to.end!



But, it did finally end (thank goodness or I might have started to cry I hurt so much by the end of that weekend) and we were left with a hallway with inlay (woop woop, a total bonus we were not expecting!), and 3 bedrooms in good enough condition that no repair work was needed (yay cuz I honestly don't know what we would hve done if they did need repair$). But, we were left with a very grimy floor that needed a facelift, but oh the potential!!

Yes, I was so tired and sore from staple-fest that I didn't have the energy for a proper "styled" or even a "victory" photo!