3/3/2014

The Saga of The Floors

MargaretMargaret
Filed under: @ 7:13 am

Is about to begin.

Y’all cannot have failed to notice over the years that we *hate* the carpeting in this house.
The downstairs with its electric raspberry was quickly solved by having Scrum pee all over it. As annoying as that was, it did show that he had taste. I’d have peed on it too if Scrum hadn’t beaten me to it.
So we yanked that one out within a year or so of moving in. It was wonderfully therapeutic even though it exposed the tremendously ugly 1968 vintage asphalt tile that had, at one point, been covered with linoleum that was underneath the carpet pad.
The asphalt tile is ugly, but the carpet was worse!
The upstairs, however….. Powder blue carpeting. Nobody in their right minds, nobody with pets, friends, children, grandchildren, a garden, to say nothing of actual honest to god FEET, puts powder blue carpeting in ANYWHERE. And to put powder blue carpeting on the floor smacks of serious lunacy.
But we haven’t had the money or the momentum to break free and do something about it.

Now we do! 😀 The carpeting is old, permanently stained in places, a major PITA to clean, and a dust trap. Did I mention that one of the major allergens that both of our cats have in their profile is house dust? BooYAH, laminate flooring is going to be SO much easier on their systems!

We had three companies come out to do bids for us. One was a major, multi outlet franchise. Two were small, local companies. Mr. Multi Outlet Franchise came out all slick in a company car, suit, briefcase, laser measuring device, the whole nine yards. I was impressed and he immediately shot to the top of my list.
The second, a few hours later, was a little scruffy in jeans, writing down measurements on the back of the Google Maps instructions he had printed out to get him here. #2 had samples of products that we looked at and chose, but what distinguished #2 was….. He LOOKED! #2 poked around, pulled up furnace vents looked under the carpet, and what he found under the hated, filthy, hard to clean powder blue carpet in the majority of our upstairs was….

5/8″ oak hardwood.

Ah yup! Ours is one of those houses where the original owners got all fashionable in the early ’70s and covered what looks to be some pretty damn gorgeous flooring with wall to wall carpet. Which Mr. Multi Outlet Franchise was going to find only AFTER he had sold us (without return or refund I’m sure) the entire upstairs full of laminate flooring.

#2 shot immediately to the top of our list and since #3 is a nice enough guy, but totally flaky, we’re going with #2.

I’ll get around to naming names after the job is done and we’re satisfied enough to post a glowing review. As it turns out #2 is also a little flaky, but since he’s so far only been flaky personally instead of flaky professionally we’re still anticipating something pretty spectacular.

In the mean time it’s going to be a big, fat, sweaty pain in the ass. We’ve got to move furniture, we’ve got to pack up books and ornaments and ourselves, our cats, and our snakes for two days when Vlad The Installer and his dudes are here sanding and refinishing the hardwood.

T-minus 4 weeks and counting at this point. Andrew’s having surgery on another of his hands during the first week in March and Sara is going to be here during the second week in March so we put the whole thing off until the last week in March.
We can’t promise not to be grumpy, distracted, annoyed, harried, or completely insane, but damn we’re going to have nice floors!


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