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!
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