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At long last we are carpet free. I pulled up the last of this evil dirt trapping substance recently and am replacing it with laminate flooring.
The background in this lovely picture is the plywood subfloor before I sanded and cleaned it. The carpet and foam backing has been pulled and this pile of ...grunge...is a small sample of what lurked beneath the carpet/foam combination.
A list of artifacts found beneath the carpet:
SAND (lots of it, this is Florida you know!)
COINS (finders keepers)
AIRSOFT PLASTIC BB'S (there have been ferocious battles here)
PAINTBALLS ( paintballs! Did I miss something?)
HAIR (eeeuuyyyyyy)
PAPER CLIPS ( how?)
CRUMBLED CARPET BACKING DUST ( ugh, latex...)
MYSTERIOUS STAINS (puppies, babies...)
HOUSEHOLD DUST ( 17 years of skin cells captured by carpet)
Am I oversharing? My point is carpet can never be considered clean. Well, maybe when it's in the store on that big rolly thing and no one has actually walked on it. ...maybe then.
Who first had the bright idea to lay a woven fabric on the floor and then walk on it? Ugh.
I am thrilled to be rid of it, but the laminate I am putting down to replace it tickles me. It is a synthetic product (wood based) called "Heritage Pine". It has an extremely hard surface that is printed to look like well worn, knotty pine floor boards...like our REAL pine floors down stairs.
When I was laying the laminate, I was reminded of a "Fix It Up" type show I watched a while back. Two very well off people were having a new "country-style" mini-mansion built. The work crew had just finished installing beautiful wide plank pine floor boards. The next step was to put a good protective finish on them...I thought.
No, no the next step was to take heavy metal chains and throw them on the floor. Then the workmen were instructed to step on, kick around, and scrape the chains around these beautiful boards to give them "character". My jaw dropped.
They could have just invited my kids and our labs over for a weekend and saved buying all that chain.
13 comments:
EWWWW! ...note to self: eat breakfast before visiting FC.
We are gearing up to do some remodeling here at the Hick Homestead and we are going to remove the old linoleum and install wood floors...maybe laminate. We have so much dust here that comes in with the kids, dog, cats, lizards, etc. that hard floors work better for us in most of the house.
We had the same experience when we pulled up a 15-year-old carpet in order to replace it with wood. I was astonished by the amount of dust and dirt under there. (Including mud with the builders' footprints in it. I guess it wasn't going to be their house . . .) We cleaned the wood subfloor, and then we painted it with a wood sealing paint so that the animal smells would no longer waft up from it. I intend to do that with every room we refloor from now on. Fortunately, I cannot measure and cut lumber, so I will hire someone to put in my next floor. Busy?
Sounds as though they could have filmed several episodes of CSI at your place. I always love to hear about all the dead skin in our carpets and mattresses. Yum.
I'm laughing at the new floor and chains. We're about to start playing this old house over here in St. Pete- arghhh!
Okay- back with another comment. I just caught up with Twiggy Forest! I love these three posts and I think you did an especially fine job on your bushwacking post. What fun! And you are so brave- and smart, I would guess- to make this investment in land. The aerial view is great. I'm going to go back over this post and link to everybody there and see what they're up to. Thanks, FC!
Hick,
Lizards?
Pablo,
Yes, very. :)
DPR,
The beach is the worse. We used to camp on it and you had to step in a bucket of water before entering the tent.
Vicki,
Your St. Pete place sounds great. It should be fun working on it. Thanks for the kind words about the posts, that's a great set of bloggers to link to.
Yeah, see, the chains make dents for the dirt to hide in. Very clever.
Old Hoss,
Oh...now I get it.
Yuck. I may try to make do with area rugs in the new house; you can always roll them up once in a while and clean underneath.
We had the brilliant idea of putting mushroom-color Berber carpet in the main room of our house/cabin. That was before young kids. I think once we're outta here, that stuff will get ripped out and we'll start from scratch.
Deb,
When you get in the new house, what happens to the cabin?
Well, I was thinking of opening Deb's Bed & Breakfast for Bloggers!
Oh yeah, I got rid of the carpet in this old farm house too. The carpet (my brother sent home part of his combat pay from VietNam for the folks to "do something" with the old house), was laid on top of the old linoleum. You know the kind, the wild patterned stuff that actually came in almost room sized pieces that had a nifty border around it that sometimes got snagged so in a few years it looked like a scalloped edge? Under that were newspapers. Turns out there was a new suspect in the Lindy baby kidnapping case. What a hoot! I didn't have what it took to pull that up, so laid the new laminate flooring over top of the lineoleum w/newspapers. The house is located downwind from a very active rock quarry; it's not like dirt is going away. The only thing evil about the laminate flooring is that toddlers at full speed slip on it quite easily in their stocking feet. Hey! That will be an issue some day for you too!
Deb,
Cool!
OA,
Sounds like you were peeling layers of history...I love that. Yes, it is slick and I can see toddlers crashing and burning. I can wait a while for that to be an issue for me! Thanks for commenting!
You're a few uncarpeted steps ahead of us. We eagerly anticipate the removal of our ^%$#@!!!! carpet this spring or summer.
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