Hello all. The very first thing we did, on the afternoon of the day we closed, was to have a couple guys tear out the old carpet. With the house empty this was the best time to do this.
As you can see from the setup photos the house had carpet in most of the first floor and on the stairs. Aside from not loving the color, it had 20 years of lived-in funk plus, as we discovered, the previous owners put mothballs in the vacuum bag. We'd never heard of this but there is conflicting information about whether this is an effective method to fight fleas. Regardless of whether that's true, it served to spread the smell of mothballs throughout the carpeted parts of the house. Out it goes!
Aside from the pad shredding as the guys took it up, the first part of this was fairly straight forward.
Every carpet has tack strips along the edges to hold it down. What we were not expecting was for the installers to have used somewhere on the order of a bazillion staples to hold the pad in place. This was one reason for the shredding and left us a tedious mess to clean up.
In good news there are a ton of models of staple removers. In bad news, we had to take each of them up one-by-one to clear the floor for installing hardwood. Each stair alone had 40-50 staples. You get to really know your house when you spend hours of quality time kneeling or sitting on the plywood subfloor.
Until next time.
That must feel so good, to have pulled the old carpet out. I remember when we moved into our Arlington house that was the first project we tackled. I was appalled by the amount of dirt and who knows what that was lying under the carpet and pad. Luckily they didn't use as many nails as you have found, and we found lovely oak floors underneath. This will look so good once you install the new flooring!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, one joy of home reno is discovering what gems might be hidden!
DeleteWow, That must feel gr8. On our way back from Bangkok. Merry Christmas, everyone!
ReplyDeleteYes, it's a huge esthetic and practical improvement. Like starting with a clean canvas. Happy travels!
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