Subtitle: Carpet Be Gone!

It’s official: over the weekend we got possession of the house, and although it’s been ours for 2 months, we now officially have keys and can get the heck in there to start all the work we’ve been planning. The main living area of the house was left in good clean order, but the sellers had a hard time getting all their stuff out of the basement, garage and yard by the deadline. This wasn’t a huge deal in the grand scheme of things, but it did take some of the fun out of our first day in the house. We were planning a champagne toast and general celebration, but with the seller still loading an insurmountable pile of stuff into a U-Haul in the driveway, the moment kind of passed without fanfare.

It’s just as well. We don’t have time to be sitting around tippling champagne and congratulating ourselves. We got shit to do! After we unloaded some tools on Saturday, we took the afternoon off to watch the US Women’s Olympic soccer team beat France, then we were back in the house early Sunday to take care of the first (#1 in this post) order of business: rip out the wall-to-wall carpet.

The carpet didn’t look terrible, but we don’t like carpet. And in this case it was harboring dog and cigarette smells. We called around to see how much it would cost to have someone remove and haul it, since it’s not super expensive compared to other projects. But then our buddy Dave shared that he LOVES removing carpet and has some experience doing it. Lucky us!! We decided it was going to be our first project in the house and we picked up some extra pairs of gloves and respirators.

Thankfully the carpet didn’t go into all the bedrooms, just the main living area and hallway (probably about 800 square feet). We took a peek at what was going on below the carpet and it seemed like pretty standard tacks & padding. We got started pulling it up in one corner and the carpet came up pretty easily. We cut it up into managable strips and piled it in the driveway to toss into the dumpster when it arrives this week.

The carpet removal itself went quickly. The padding came up pretty easily too, but boy did it stick to the billiondy staples the installers used. As satisfying as it was to staple the crap out of the carpet upon installation, it was that much of a pain in the butt (and knees) to pull those staples out by hand.

The hardwood floors below are in better shape than I though they would be. That being said, there are several gouges and scratches that need to be fixed when refinishing. I suspect that the person who installed the carpet did it as a cheaper alternative to refinishing the floors (or they just loved carpet, which is possible).

After we got that carpet out of the house, the space already smells a little bit better. It definitely feels more open and spacious and more like the look we’re going for. We also managed to pull out some wallpaper (there was one accent wall covered in smoke-tinged wallpaper – stand by for more on that!) and get cracking on removing the linoleum from the bathroom. Then, we realized we don’t do manual labor very often, and we should stop before we hurt ourselves.