The Magic of Carpet

I keep joking on Facebook (and to anyone who will listen) that I was going to give my house a Brazilian wax last weekend. Well, I was only sort-of kidding.

If you remember my last post, the house features wall-to-wall carpeting everywhere except the rooms with running water (and one closet). Now, let me just take a moment to tell you how much I hate carpeting. I abhor it. Yeah, it's nice when the weather's cold, but in Houston, that happens for exactly 45 minutes every year, and we all rush to put on our hats and flimsy coats and make snowmen out of the flurries that melt immediately upon hitting the ground. Carpeting is just the worst.

Perhaps I'm outing myself as a completely OCD freak, but every time I see carpeting, all I can think of is spilled food, buckets of shed skin cells, pet hair, baby vomit, and LOTS of small creature urine. I know, that tapioca pudding you're eating is super appetizing now, right? I'm sorry. I can't help it. I hate carpeting. I even hated it in my last pre-marriage apartment, where I was the first tenant. The stuff off-gassed VOC's for six months before daily window opening finally killed it.

Carpeting in this house-- carpeting of indeterminate age-- carpeting with bubbles and speed bumps and so much staining and wear-- it wasn't staying. Sorry house, I'm not even leaving you a little landing strip. End of debate.

The thing about pulling up carpeting is that it's fun and incredibly easy. For the uninitiated, a carpet installer nails down little tack strips:

and the carpet mashes onto the spikes, holding it in place. The best part about this is that they only do it along the edges of a room. Find a corner of the room and just yank on the carpeting, and it'll reveal the little strips.

I got a sharp utility blade and cut the carpet into long strips that were around 4' wide. Sharp blades are key, because they cut the carpet much better than a dull blade. I don't have much upper body strength, so I would kneel on the floor like I'm doing the Child's Pose in yoga:

dig the knife into the carpet, and pull it toward the side of my body. Kind of like a reverse inch worm. I'm sure it was incredibly amusing to the spectator. I cut 4' swaths because I needed something I could carry that wouldn't be too heavy when rolled up. In the beginning, Andrew was at work and couldn't help, so I did a room or two by myself, but once he came over, we really got rolling! All the carpeting came up in less than a day. At the end, we were left with tack strips and carpet padding everywhere:

and a garage full of old carpeting:

We left the padding down so we'd have something to kneel on as we removed the tack strips. They come out easily with a crowbar or hammer, because the nails are shallow. Andrew removed the strips and I rolled up the padding, and dumped it in the garage as well.

As I removed the padding, I was surprised to find a plywood subfloor underneath. you can kind of see it in this image:

Our home inspector, who was otherwise awesome, told us he saw concrete when he pulled back the carpeting. We bought our flooring based on the assumption that we were laying it on a slab, so I was somewhat annoyed that we had the wrong info. We are floating the floor system (more on that in another post), so it's not an issue, but it did preclude us from buying some other types of wood that could've been just a nice. Ah well, you live and learn! Next time we'll check for sure.

We're going to call a demolition company that works with Habitat for Humanity to see if they want to come pick up the old carpeting. These companies generally grab the materials for free and recycle them. Because we're donating it to a company that helps a charity, we'll be able to get a receipt showing the value of our donation, and use it on our taxes. Which is great, because we're feeling prettttty cash poor from the flooring and hiring a painter (look forward to a post on that, too).

The next step for us is removing all the baseboards in the house, which involves knocking some nails through and labeling each board, so they can be replaced. Looking forward to a long weekend!

State of the House

I figure it's worth noting that when we put the offer on the house, we hadn't been inside it.

Okay, so that sounds insane, but when you buy a house, there's an option period when you can back out without any kind of penalty. Remember, we saw the sign on July 3rd, and offered on the 4th. By the time we'd put the offer on the house, it had already been shown five times. But we didn't really feel comfortable calling a realtor out to the property on a holiday, so we just made a few phone calls. Our agent, the one who sold Andrew our current house, called the selling agent, and they got everything together for the offer, all via phone. Awesome.

When we finally did see the house a few days later, it was completely full of stuff. Most houses are, when they're showing, full of furniture and things neatly put away. But this was a house full of Richard and Mavis's things, all unclaimed odds and ends that would eventually be sold, the agent told us, at an estate sale. A few days later, we went back into the house while the home and termite inspectors were doing their reports, and I was able to take several photos of the "before" state of the house.

So allow us to take you on the grand tour.

A plan to orient yourselves, first. The front entry door is at the bottom of the plan:

The front entry room:

In this photo, the front door is to the right. You can see the large window that looks into the front yard. In this room, there's not a single permanent light fixture. The opening to the left goes directly into the dining room, and behind the camera is the hallway to the bedrooms. This space is more square than the other living space, but it's used as more of a pass-through zone than anything. In order to give it an identity, it needs to be more like an actual room, with well-defined traffic zones. We have stained carpets that show a lot of foot traffic staining. Not pictured: a linoleum entry area with a transition to the carpeting.

The dining room:

There's a nice, big window opening into the back yard. On the left are two openings to the kitchen, and on the right is an opening to the other living space. The light fixture in this room is dated, and carpeting is a tough choice for a space that is primarily for serving food.

The kitchen:

Woah. Aside from being super dated, the cabinet fronts show a ton of wear. The hardware is old, and the drawers don't have any sliding hardware. The fridge is gone, but we still have the outdated stove with wind-up timer, and the microwave which isn't that bad. The sink is rusted out on the bottom and will need to be replaced. Two nice windows and a ledge are decent additions, but the counter is old tile that will eventually get a facelift. The fixture in this room seems to do a good job of lighting the spaces, but under-cabinet lighting would be nice. Linoleum floors are coming out, too. The kitchen projects (save the floor) are something we're saving for when the weather gets cooler.

Back through the dining room and into the living room:

Acoustic tiles! Neato! There's one ceiling fan/light fixture in here that fails to fully light the space. A large window adds some natural light, at least. Dirty carpeting in here also has some bumps and lumps from stretching out... Or was it incorrectly installed?

If I turn around and look directly behind the camera, I see two doors:

On the left is the laundry room, which has another door into the patio out back, and a large walk-in closet with a pull-string light. The laundry room is little more than a hallway, and has really badly located light switches, behind the door. These rooms both have brand new linoleum... it's staying in the laundry, but we're taking it out of the closet when we re-do the flooring.

If I walk back into the dining room and then into the main entry where we started, I can see a hallway:

Nothing to really look at here. There's a pullstring for the attic acces, and a linen closet with a pullstring on the right. Aside from the closet, there are 4 doors that open into bedrooms and a bath. 

The first door on the left is a bedroom:

Wowee. This photo, thanks to the powers of ISO, doesn't look nearly as depressing as it is in real life. The fixture is super dated, and the carpeting, like the rest of the house, is in bad shape. 

At the end of the hallway, on the left, another bedroom:

This bedroom has a half bath:

It used to have a shower as well, but it was capped and turned into the closet on the right. The bathroom is in pretty good shape: It really only needs some paint. 

Across the hall, is the 3rd bedroom:

This bedroom has a nice closet, and is pretty similar to the previous one. 

The final stop on my tour is the one full bathroom in the house:

The tile... it burns! I don't think we have any plans to retile the bathroom, but the cabinet next to the sink is no longer there, and the tub needs to be refinished and get a new shower head. The weird thing on the wall is a gas heater that still works... And I have absolutely no idea what to do with it just yet.

So that's it! Seems like a ton of work, huh? I think we'll be able to make it all work!

Closing

Andrew and I live at the end of a dead end street. Now, just for the record, this isn't some kind of analogy or something-- we have neighbors on either side of us, but the one to the south is the last one on the street. Here is our house on the right, and the last house on the street, to the left:

Our neighbors were super nice people, an older couple named Richard and Mavis. Richard had a stroke at some point, and his mobility was a little slow, so Andrew felt it would be neighborly to cut their grass. Mavis always came out and thanked him for doing so, and we enjoyed having great neighbors.

At the beginning of the year, we were sad to find out that Mavis had passed away. Not too long after, Richard joined her. It was really sad to see them go, and Andrew and I wondered what would become of the house next door.

Now, I'd be lying if I said that Andrew and I hadn't talked about the possibility of buying the house if it ever came up for sale. We assumed that, when the house didn't go up for sale right away after Richard passed on, it'd be several years before we'd see any kind of sale there. But, after a few more months with other family members in the house, we came home to a large FOR SALE sign in the yard.

The real estate market in Houston didn't suffer nearly as badly as most places in the country. In fact, as our neighborhood turns over from small ranch houses like ours to two-story, multi-lot houses like this:

...we find that sales in our neighborhood are happening quicker than ever. When would we have another chance to buy the house next door? Not that we planned on tearing down both and building a megahouse like people in our neighborhood, but why not take the opportunity to upgrade from our 1200sf current house, to something bigger, with more bathrooms? Never underestimate the importance of bathrooms.

So we put in an offer on July 4th, one day after the FOR SALE sign appeared in the yard. The offer was accepted, we went through the complete and utter circus that is closing on a house (complete with inspections and negotiations and so many decisions!) and we got the keys on August 15th, just nine days ago.

We're excited to move in next door, but before we do, there's some work to do...

Whoo boy... Anyone got a few gallons of paint?!