Projects can be dangerous and lots of work

Right now we’re in the middle of such a project.  We took four days off work to get part of this done.  We removed the carpet from the master bedroom and closet, something we’ve wanted to do a long time.  It’s almost impossible to keep off-white carpet looking as crisp as the day you moved in the house.  After fourteen years of cleaning up fur balls and other spills, it needed a change.  Yes, with cats fur balls can’t be avoided entirely, even with regular doses of petromalt.

 The old carpet

We’ve been wanting to switch away from carpet altogether anyway.  After all, it’s just a big rag on the floor that you can never really get fully clean.  So it was a debate between wood and tile and wood and tile.  Finally, we decided that tile would be best because it’s indestructible.  We can’t move the furniture every week to clean up fur balls.  That kind of situation won’t be as harsh on tile, if they have to sit there a while.  This sounds terrible I know but fur balls are a fact of life with cats.  It doesn’t happen every week, or even every month, but they do happen.

 Pulling up the old carpet and pad.  Raven is helping.

The last few weeks we brought home countless samples of floor coverings, but when we found the tile on sale that’s a good match for the one we had installed in the house fourteen years ago, it was a done deal.  They don’t make our large chipped edge tile anymore.  So this one is a plank tile that looks like wood with the same colors as the tile we already have. 

 Clean and ready to go

Then it was a matter of finding an installer that would actually show up to do the work.  That’s a real problem around here and always has been.  We wanted to get three bids, but as it turned out only one guy showed up and he was reasonable so we hired him for the job.  And he did a fantastic job!  Now we want to do more, although we already swore to ourselves no more big projects like this one.  But the stairs need to be done and maybe the loft too.  We’ll see if we come to our senses.  At least there’s not much furniture to move in those places.

 Some of the stuff from the bedroom and closet

Once we settled on the installer, now it was time to get to work.  This whole ordeal about killed us and we still have to put all the furniture back into the bedroom and things into the closet.  It’s a daunting task when I look around the house.  We have furniture stacked up in every room downstairs.  We’re walking around things in the house and will be doing that a bit longer.  We still have to seal the tile but have to wait three days to do that, so the grout can cure and dry well.

We expected a few mishaps and this project didn’t disappoint in that department.  It took a whole day to drain the water bed and move all the furniture out of there before we could even start pulling the carpet and pad up.  We were beat.

 

More stuff from bedroom

The next day we got the carpet and pad out.  What a mess.  I was moving stuff out of the closet while hubby was cutting the carpet into smaller pieces to make it more manageable for the dump.  Silly me, I forgot the tack strip was exposed.  Of course I stepped right on the thing carrying a load of clothes.  Hubby said to get shoes on because the room was a construction zone.  He was right.  I kept on working though, after I put my flip-flops on, and then put peroxide and band aides on my foot after I cleaned the bottom half of the closet out.

 Koki on pad we covered water bed mattress with

Raven on the dresser, which is now in the dining room

When we finished that task and tying the carpet and pad up for the dump, we were too exhausted to do anything else.  So the next day, I went into the bedroom to scrape the pad up that was left on the floor while hubby pulled the tack strip up.  This was a slow going job and quite strenuous working on your hands and knees.  They must use super strong glue for the carpet pad.

I was so blasted tired that I stood up to get the hammer to pull out a nail we missed in the slab and fell against the way causing a metal sculpture to fall off the wall.  Luckily, it missed my head and cut my right hand deep in two places.  I was gushing blood all over the concrete, so I rushed to the bathroom to get my hand over the sink.  Hubby came with paper towels, peroxide, ointment and more band aides.  Good grief!  Of course my hand hurt like the devil and it was gaping open a bit, but we got most of the bleeding stopped and the thing doctored.  That was the end of my work for the day though.  I went and sat down with an ice pack on my hand for the next two hours.  We thought we would watch it to see if I needed stitches.  So far, so good, but I’m glad I have a couple more days off work.  The thought of squeezing them into gloves right now isn’t very appealing.

 The tile in progress

Of course it would have been better to remove all the pics off the walls before we started the job, which we didn’t do.  But the Indian sculpture that hit me is down right now.

 Our installer busy cutting pieces

 Done except the grout

I feel like the walking wounded right now.  Thank goodness for pain killers that help me sleep at night.  Between my back, my hands and my foot, I’m in a heck of a mess at the moment.

And the cats are wondering what the heck is going on around here, although they’ve enjoyed crawling on all the piles of stuff stacked everywhere.  But they’re quite disturbed that they can’t go and investigate the bedroom.