This past weekend we celebrated Memorial Day in the United States. Most people plan picnics, family gatherings and other fun things. What do I do? I plan projects. Most of the time it involves my flower beds, but this year I decided that there was a more pressing project that I wanted to do.

Nasty Carpeting!!

This carpeting was here when we moved in 9.5 years ago. What we should have done back then is taken the time to remove the carpeting and then refinish all of the hardwood floors. However, when we signed on the house Jay and I had already been married for two weeks and were still living in our separate places. We just wanted to start our marriage TOGETHER.

I’ve done everything that I could with this carpeting because Jay wasn’t a huge fan of hardwood floors in the winter. After years of trying to clean it I finally gave up and told Jay that I wanted it gone. I hated it. We had no idea what was under it, but I told him that at this point I would happily live with whatever it was just so long as the carpet was gone!

Sunday afternoon, after Jay’s nap, we tore it out!

I was very excited to see that the floors were not as damaged as I had feared.

After the carpeting was outside (cut and rolled into manageable pieces) I told Jay he was free to go play in his workshop while I did the rest. We are not refinishing the floor any time soon because if we do this one we will have to do all of them, and that’s over half of the first floor.

I then spent the next five hours pulling staples, nails and tack strips.

Jay snuck up and took a few pictures of me. I was listening to a Jane Austen audiobook while working my way around the room.

At least it was a gorgeous day so I could have the windows and door open.

Really, overall, the floor didn’t look too bad. Is it perfect? No. Is it nasty carpeting? No! Then I’m good…

There are deep scratches…

Water stains…

Burn Marks…

And so many holes!

But it’s okay. I can live with all of these without an issue.

Today, after doing some yard work first thing in the morning and then trying to overcome the sinus headache created by the weeding, I finished cleaning the living room. First I washed the walls and then I got down on my hands and knees so that I could scrub the floor.

Jay said that I became way too excited when I told him that I was going to use Murphy’s Oil Soap to wash the floor.

You can’t really tell by the pictures, but after seeing the water I KNOW that I really washed a lot of dirt off of this floor.

Before we ate supper we moved the furniture back into the living room.

This makes me VERY happy.

Maybe we’ll refinish the floor in a few years. I’m not in a hurry, though, because I still have Bob and one of his favorite hobbies is throwing up on hardwood floors.

There are still a few projects left to do, but we’ll get to them eventually. We have to plug all of the holes and Jay has to make some trim to wrap around the tile by the door.

But it’s okay because the nasty carpeting is gone!!!!