Craft show season is almost over, the work table isn't gonna get made until I can wrangle my son into helping me on a weekend and I never found the heart to dismantle the dresser and transform it into a book depository-- now what do I do? How about a project started 5 years ago that will never, ever get finished? A project that can't be done, I'm all over it!
When this house was purchased, it came equipped with the nastiest, dirtiest, most stained-filled beige carpet known to man. At least I think it started out beige. The designer name for the color it is now would be Speckled Madness Grey. This Speckled Madness covered the floor in every room and hallway except one bedroom, the bathroom and kitchen. I immediately went to work pulling up this horror and got the one bedroom and the computer alcove done before the furniture was moved in. And when I say "I" I mean "I". The lazy fuckers who live with me whined and whined and dragged their feet and acted like pulling up the tack strips was the hardest job on planet and I was ruining their lives by forcing them to do such horrendous manual labor. It was worse than waterboarding and I was a controlling biotch for forcing them to roll and tie up the pulled carpet and pads. And that was just the boys. The girl didn't even pretend to help.
Then the furniture came in and all carpet removal stopped. That is, until the cats decided that they were gonna have a territorial spray marking fight on a far corner of the dining room carpet. Good thing the furniture in the dining room isn't heavy. Over the course of two months worth of weekends and holidays (but never after work days, because screw that!), I moved the furniture out and removed the carpet in manageable strips-- by myself. In the end, after watching me break my back for a month and a half, the lazy fuckers were shamed into pulling up staples and tack strips. The girl didn't even pretend to help. That was two years ago.
Yesterday I started on the hallway and stairs. Now, a regular person would probably be able to do this in a day or so, especially since there is no furniture to move. But I am not a regular person. I am old, fat and broken. I am broken in so many ways it would take more than one blog entry to list them all. So I am again removing the carpet in small, manageable strips.
This carpet is so filthy that I am afraid of catching an exotic, Dr. House baffling disease. Right now I'm still working on the hallway part and it's as easy as it ever gets but I'm not sure what is going to happen when I get to the stairs part of this project. I look at those stairs and think about how much I'd rather be failing at chain maille than doing this. Or writing a long, repetitive, long and repetitive, long entry about removing the carpet in which I repeat myself endlessly instead of removing carpet. Did I mention how dirty this carpet is? It is so filthy a Roomba cannot be used on it. The Roomba's wheels and dirt catchers get filled and tangled after just one foot of carpet cleaning. Am I repeating myself? Am I going to have to stop writing this and go remove carpet? The answer, I fear, is yes to both.
When we moved into our house 7 years ago (my first; I grew up in an apartment in Queens) it had an avocado shag carpet that went nicely with the 70s orange wallpaper in the hall closet. We looked at each other and immediately hired a handyman to remove the carpet from the main floor, but left it in the upper hallway and stairs because we had a baby and toddler and thought it would be safer. Now they're 10 and 7 and I have been thinking about removing the carpet like you are--in pieces--because I too am old and broken, but I haven't gotten up the energy. I think you're inspiring me.
ReplyDeleteMy husband got rid of the closet wallpaper (who wallpapers a closet?) when we discovered that cigarette smoke odors from the old owners were escaping and making our coats smell disgusting. So now it's just the ugly carpet, which is covering an oak floor that we'll get refinished when we win the lottery or something.
Me and you, we're like brothers from another mother except we're girls. This is me and my hubby's first house ever too. And we are also using the lottery payment plan for home improvement.
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