Goodbye Old Carpet

This is a somewhat unglamorous post, but for me it is a super-satisfying one.  Come on in through the front door to our little back room and look at the 1970’s carpet.  Is your reaction the same as mine?  Ugh! Let’s get rid of this ASAP!  I felt this way in 1975 and 2012 as well as every year in between~

Continuing on my little DIY project, at this point I had the ceiling beams primed twice and painted twice in Benjamin Moore Regal paint in white.  I had thought of chalk paint, but went with something flat and with good coverage.  This seemed to do the trick; the walls are Eggshell and look slightly yellow in this photo; they are really just off white, to give a little contrast~

I had pulled up a corner of the carpet to reveal that yes, as with the rest of the house, there is hardwood underneath this stuff.  Once the painting was done, I pulled a large corner back.  Thankfully the padding had protected the flooring~

In under an hour, fueled by forty years of wanting to get rid of this crap, I tore that carpet back up off the tacks.  It came up in strips; it’s time had come and gone, it was ready to go~

Then the padding went….out the window…as quickly as possible~

I rollered the last of the closet and then that piece too, went~

In the closet I found a little cut out door.  My Romantic self hoped to find something interesting underneath, but I was disappointed to pull up the panel to see the brick and concrete foundation.The kids will definitely ask me what’s under there, so I thought it best to check it out ahead of time~

Next up, I went to work on the strips of carpet tack, with a hammer and pliers and crow bar.  Dad says there was carpet there before, so he just replaced it.  These strips were old, but behind this one you can see the original quarter round baseboard, as well as the nice 1923 hardwood of the floor, which I then vacuumed, washed and finished with a liquid floor wax~

I must have been exhausted after hauling all that carpet and padding out as I didn’t take pics of the finished floor.  But the next day, with the room at last cleaned out, I got to work on the items which would go in the room.  First a chair, then this piece~