This week is the second phase of our renovations. Our goal was to wrap it all up before Christmas but we just didn't have enough time sans children to get the bedroom and the living room clear. Therefore today the living room and hallway are being refinished. When we did the first bedroom, Randy got saddled with all of the labor. He had to clear the room, pull up the carpet, move out the furniture and pull up the tack strips and staples. He stayed up all night one night to complete the job and his hands and his back were a mess. This time, I think he feared the same thing would happen. Not so! I headed straight to the house from work yesterday and changed into my grubby gear. I was ready to get down and dirty and that I did. Randy had already cleared out most of the room. However the couch, the fish tank and the tv were all still in the room as well as most of the carpet.
I decided that I wanted to prepare the room so that Randy would only have to take care of the fish tank and the area beneath it. To do this I had to move the couch. There was the problem. I am but one person. It is a long and heavy couch. The only exit for the couch is out the living room window. In theory I could do it myself but I feared the couch would get stuck in the window and I would create a bigger dilemma and more work for Randy. So what is a girl to do when she needs help? Call her big brother. My brother, Tim, came over to help me move the couch. He had his doubts but simply put I was going to do it with or without him. When he pulled up, I already had the window half off. He helped me get it the rest of the way off and we heaved the couch out onto the front porch. We ripped up the carpet and pushed it out the window too: and there it sat on my porch until the floor guys came this morning and moved it to the side of the house.
Once the carpet was up, the place was a mess. There was a ton of dust and debris in the floor as well as hundreds of staples. Bigger problem yet was the fact that Tim and I
could not get the window back in. What's a girl to do when she can't get a window back in? Call her Father in Law. Yep, my wonderful father in law came over at 10pm last night to replace the window. Heart of gold, that man. He and my brother wrestled with it briefly and finally got back in place. Then they stood there and chatted for another hour while I was pulling up tack strips. This is the floor after the carpet was heaved onto the porch:
Once the boys were done yakking and left me alone, it was time to get down to business. The clock was ticking and I wanted to make some major progress before Randy got home from work. I grabbed my handy dandy hammer:
I got mean with those tack strips and staples. I spent hours prying up the strips and using pliers to pull out the staples. This morning I can barely use my swollen right hand.
Randy was pretty suprised when he got home and found that I had most of the hard work already done. He was still up until 6am moving the fish tank and getting the rest of the staples up out of the floor. The floor guys felt sorry for him this morning and finished the last few staples for him because they were so impressed with our progress. In the end, it was so worth the work. Now we just have to paint - once we agree on a color - and get furniture - once we agree on a style!
