Carpet Removal: Day 2 Report (July 14)

Okay, I lied. We didn't finish Stage Two on Day One. We tried, but I just fizzled out in the afternoon. The truth: we pulled up the tackstrip in three bedrooms (the fourth didn't have tackstrips), but left the hallway for Day Two.

A view of that stage:



Still sore, we set to work. A small radio from the "not even a Super Walmart" made the work go much more pleasantly. And the drop in temperature helped too!

Before I even made it upstairs, D. had accomplished Stage Three: Pull Up the Wool Undercarpet. This stuff was yucky and itchy and shed onto everything it touched. Also it was filled with 44 years of dust. But I'm a knitter, so I have a deep fondness for wool in all its uses. And this was so felty and old-fashioned (one of the rooms had much less appealing - though easier to remove - foam undercarpet) that I couldn't help but have a soft spot.

Some quick sweeps of the mountains of dust and wooly whiskers, and we dove right into Stage Four: Go Back and Plier Out Staples and Nails. We made it through two rooms before our hands were so cramped and sore that we just couldn't go on.

I do think the effort is worth it, because I'm so proud of what it looks like now.



You can really start to appreciate the spaces (in all of their unevenness). We've also discovered that the floors were painted before being carpeted. See, they're brown:



And we can get a little bit of the history of the house. We can see that two of the rooms were formerly separate, but are now connected. Based on the information from the previous owners and tenants (I'll post more on them later), we surmise that this was done when the house was split into two units. These rooms were converted from two bedrooms to a living and dining room for the upstairs flat.

Also, I have been speculating that the walls and floor at the top of the stairs were added at the same time (and imagining that the foyer and upstairs hallway would seem much grander and more open if we removed them)), and the floorboards give some credence to my harebrained theory.

In the end, it looks like we're have the option of nice wood floors on the second floor. With that freedom, we are going to have explore our options: refinishing, staining, painting, or area rugs.

One thing's for certain: we're not putting down any wall-to-wall. We just would feel too guilty about making some future owners do all that work to remove it.