six impossible things

April 27, 2008

renovating sucks. It powerful sucks.

Ah, the Simpsons. Now I have been reminded, I can see "powerful sucks" re-entering my lexicon. Does lexicon mean what I think it means? No matter. Oh, speaking of word things, as I published that last post, Blogger popped up a message which said "auto save failed, cannot find content" or some such crap, and I tell you if nothing had published there was no way I was writing all that out again. Seriously. It wasn't half interesting enough the first time round, and as I have set the bar so low, I see no reason to challenge myself.

Anyway, the carpet guys came on Friday (yes, on a public holiday, but it was their choice) and we were up until 1am the night before painting the lounge while we still had the freedom to drip paint all over hardwood floors. Yes, we have hardwood floors and yes, we are covering them up with carpet. You know what? I hate hardwood floors. I know I am the only person in the Western world who feels this way, but I don't care. Every person who's been in here since we ripped up the old carpets have raved about the floors and assumed we are going to polish them up... no no no no no. They are cold, noisy, drafty, the dog has been digging his claws in to prevent sliding all over them like he's lost control of his limbs, and they require the purchase of multiple rugs which then slide all over the floors and look like shit. I KNOW, I AM HEATHEN. But really, people, they are COLD. They are NOISY: for the two weeks we lived with them, we could hear each other clonking all over the house, and there's only two of us: we sounded like stampeding wildebeests. They are UGLY: there are replacement boards down the middle of some rooms, there are holes in the floor chinked up with spare bits of pine, some rooms have already been (poorly) varnished and require a complete strip back, and.... even when they're done properly I don't even like the look of it. KILL ME NOW I DON'T DESERVE TO HAVE THIS HOUSE. I know, I should be in a brand new 5 bedroom mcmansion in a subdivision. Well, maybe next time. Until then I have taken photos of the floor under this carpet and will keep them until we sell the house, where the next buyer can think of the GORGEOUS things they can do with the floors under the carpet. Better them than me.

Anyway, back to the carpet. I LOVE my carpet. When we bought the house, we thought the original carpet might be liveable - you know when you walk through a house a couple of times, then buy it, then don't see it again for weeks in which you obsess about just what it is you have actually bought? Yeah, well we remembered the carpet being crap, but when we got into the house we discovered the owners had been extremely crafty with furniture/rug placement and not only did it suck, it powerful sucked. There was two different types of carpet through the house, swapping randomly from one to the other, room by room. The carpet in the lounge was grey shag, which clashed beyond belief with our brown sofas and furniture. The other carpet was blue and looked almost industrial. There were mysterious stains and bits unravelling and my favourite, an iron faceplate burnt deep into the carpet in the family room. So yes, we decided the carpet had to go. Luckily a friend of a friend is a carpet dude, who just happened to have a house lot of carpet that he had started to lay in a million-dollar house, before the lady of the house burst into tears and said she had ordered the wrong colour. It may have been the wrong colour for her, but it is damn perfect for us, just slightly lighter than I would have chosen (and only because of keeping it clean, not because I don't like the colour). Anyway, we have super-expensive carpet, and super-deluxe underlay, for a nylon-industrial-carpet budget price. I love it so, so much. I may have, in fact, lay down on my back on the new carpet and writhed around with my legs kicking in the air like an ecstatic dog. I don't have a photo of that, so you'll have to make do with the below:

The lounge, before. I don't know what's on the TV but this is mid-pulling up the grey shag carpet. Note the high-quality foam chip underlay (possibly the cheapest you can buy, if you don't count egg cartons). The timestamp on this photo tells me this is 9.09pm, which is pretty early in the piece. We probably spent the next three hours pulling up carpet staples and swearing at each other.

This is the same shot of the lounge, but with the TV moved out to the dining room to the left. The hardwood floors don't look half bad here... believe me when I tell you this was the best room for floors. It also had a fine mist of paint spray around every edge from the last time someone painted the walls (with a paint gun, obviously).

After. Mmmmmmmmm. Carpet.

9:21 PM § 10 comments