If you are planning on ripping out the carpet in your bedroom Do Not be tempted to start it at 5 pm on a Sunday evening (especially if you have just come back from a holiday and are packing to go on another holiday, are kind of tired from yard work all weekend, and you were really just looking forward to a quiet evening with a nice dinner from the garden and a chance to catch up on some library books). Sure you might think it a simple job, just take off the baseboards and rip it out, right? But there is always the chance that underneath that manky, 34 year old carpet lurks an even mankier 34 year old underlay. That underlay might be old and tired and perfectly content to stay where it has been for the last 34 years. It might take a lot of coaxing to get it to move at all. Perhaps the adhesive that was used in underlay 34 years ago is CRAP and has broken down leaving the underlay as sad, multi-coloured foam chip bits all over your subfloor and the adhesive as disgusting gluey smears all over.
(above is how the underlay should (sort of) look when it is not breaking down)
(above is how it looked over any areas of the floor that had been walked on for years)The funny thing is that even though, because of the underlay, the job turned out to be a lot more work than I thought ( How many times have I read If You Give a Pig a Pancake? I know that is how this whole home reno thing goes and still I expect to be able to whip through a job like this in no time, will I never learn? It is never as simple as I think it will be.) we were even more thrilled that we did it once we saw how disgusting it was. I can't believe that we weren't sick from spending time sleeping in there when that was lurking under the carpet. 
(scraped, swept and vacuumed and mostly ready to be finished, who knows when we will get to that)
Katherine, I have to tell you that I had planned to sit and relax last night but when I sat down to read, the book I chose was Green This! It was one that you had mentioned. Once I started reading it I didn't need any more motivation to rip the carpet out. :-) Books like that make me want to just get rid of everything in the house.
3 comments:
That takes me back to the time we pulled up the brown shag pile carpet in our house. It was equally disgusting! Now that the job is done, are you putting in the same flooring that's in your living room?
Oh, Heather. I recognize your experience. What is under the carpet is waaaaaaaaaay scarier than the actual carpet.
So, how did you convince S to get on board with your carpet removal idea? I'm guessing he wasn't home when you started this reno project?!? ;o)
Big congrats on getting that yucky job done!!
My father-in-law has a phrase when it comes to house projects: "The Hidden Bummer Factor". Which basically means that if you start a project thinking that it will take "x" amount of time... then there's bound to be some unexpected obstacle that will at least double the amount of time... and probably the $cost$, too!
We have an older home and we've had many hidden bummer factors : )
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