Welcome Home, Now Get to Work!

Yup, Isaac had been home all of 12 hours and I put him to work.

I got it in my head to rip the carpet out of the living room. It really was driving me nuts. Dirty, stained, stinky, gross. In that way only somebody else's old carpet can be. I guess after six years I should think of it as my dirty old carpet, but I never did.

I decided the time was right because: 1. the Spirit was moving me. 2. I had Isaac to help (and he was willing). 3. It was relatively empty of stuff and what was there could be moved around. 4. I wanted to rearrange the furniture anyway.

And with company coming tomorrow, isn't that the perfect time to rearrange a room, ripping up carpet etc? Well, maybe not. But it worked.

We started around 10:30 and I told Issac I thought it would take 2-3 hours, adding that I hoped that didn't mean it would actually take 6. (Doubling the estimated time is Troy and my usual standard.) Well, including the furniture moving, we got it done in about 5.

I didn't take many pictures as I was busy at the time. It was more work than I expected, but then I realized that when we did the dining room, there were four of us doing it (thank you again, David and Wendy) and I think less of the carpet underpad was glued down. It was a mess in the living room. The area rug covers a lot of it now, but it's still pretty crappy looking (see picture above). But the carpet was crappy looking too, so it's not like I've lost any ground on that one.

Plus, now it's done. It had to be done at some point right? I haven't been good at doing it but I think stuff like ripping out carpets should be done as you can, so that when you're ready to do a project like walls or whatever, you don't have to stop and say oh wait, we need to get the carpet out first. And then you don't get the first job done because you've wasted the time doing the carpet. Plus we didn't have much other garbage going out this week, so the carpet can be our allotment. When you don't rent a dumpster, garbage load can become a big problem. Getting this out now means it can't be a problem later. Ok, ending home reno lecture now...

So what does the new living room look like?

I think it's a lot more open. The TV is lower and doesn't get glare off the lights, which is nice.

The lamps have better "homes" and I think there may be more seating area, should we ever have a group over.

I can definitely feel that there's less padding under me as I sit in front of the stove, but if I keep it burning warm, I can lean on the end of the couch. A definitely perk.