Kitchen Ripping

There are those who might not find the following photos to look much like an "improvement" - but, for me, it's another in a year which so far has been one of outstanding blessings and great thanksgiving.

When I moved into my home, every single inch of the floor, both storeys, was carpeted.  1970s red deep-pile shag in the former-porch/now-office wing room.  Pea green, thick carpeting through the other wing, dining room, foyer, and living room - and on up the steps and into the master bedroom.  In the guest bedroom, faded-lime green deep-pile shag again.

The bathrooms were carpeted.  And my home was previously owned by a widowed 86-year-old man.  With all the best of intentions, over the course of 30-odd years, a man will ... miss.  I will not forget the day I came home from work to find the carpet removed from one of the bathrooms, and a note from my brother (my family used to work on this house even when I wasn't here - wonderful people), saying, "No greater love hath any mother ... than that yours removed your peepee carpet!"

Good times.  Hee.

All these years later, she and I got together yesterday (I took a few hours off work this time), and tore out the kitchen carpet.

Which - given the rather trying training period with Penelope - was itself a bit of a peepee carpet, I can admit.

Anyway - no greater love hath any mother and daughter than when we get to do a grubby job together - every year or two, we find our way to spend a few hours fixing up my yard, cleaning my basement ... tearing up carpet that never should have been in the first place ...  (Yes, the work always tends to be at/on my home.  Mom's home is perfection, you see!)

My dad would love it - well, does, I have little doubt.  He always did like when his girls found some way to work together, figuratively *or* literally.

Beneath the carpet was not, as you might imagine, a simply stunning alternative, pristine and clean and ready for the decorating magazines.  But it's hardwood exactly like the rest of the house.

A lamentable detail is that, in the 1970s when all the carpeting went down, hardwood was so passe' they apparently figured it would never, ever, ever, ever, ever see the light of day again - and so did some painting without benefit of dropcloths, and so on.  The entire house, most of which has had its floors exposed for many years now, needs sanding and refinishing.  The kitchen merely represents the most obvious need - the black glue and partially ossified carpet padding here and there.

But the boards are solid upstairs and down, but for two slender strips in the foyer, which have termite damage at least a generation old which clearly got dealt with in a hurry.  Two little boards, out of an entire house.  And one loose one, at the wall under the refrigerator.  That's the worst of it.

Before
Still Life with Kong Toys

After!

Maybe next time, mom and I rent floor sanders.

Hah!