Not really. But it felt like it this morning. I took the carpet out of the living room and hallway, and it was quite a chore. Lots of opportunity to use any pent-up aggressive energy I may just have had lying around in the back of my brain.
Yesterday, Tuesday, I got the carpet out of the downstairs bedroom. Pictures here. It wasn’t in too bad shape, so I took it down to the basement–I will probably use it to pad the cold concrete floor in the semi-finished room down there. After supper I went in to pull staples–it has become crystal clear that pulling up the carpet itself is only the beginning of actually getting the floors bare enough to start refinishing–and decided that floor isn’t in all that bad shape. Minimal dog pee in there. There are some scrapes and gouges, but those would be hidden by a bed. I’m getting tempted to not refinish in there, but will decide later. I also noticed that whoever refinished the floors last made that error of sanding a gouge in the floor they warn you about–which had the effect of making me feel relieved, I don’t have all that high a standard to live up to now.
So I got up this morning really wanting to get the rest of the downstairs carpet out, and sit here now with the satisfaction of having achieved that. These pictures tell the tale. The hardest part was getting the threshold to the sunroom up, and the carpet out from under a few other spots of woodwork. The fence guy, who still owes me a gate (the last photo in that set of pictures shows where the gate will be, and basically how it’s going to be done), hauled the old carpet and padding out to the dump for me. For the price of the gas. He had earlier talked about having trouble paying his bills–you can kinda see why when he does work essentially for free. He also mowed the lawn, which was nice– it was depearately in need of it. I think he’s feeling guilty for not getting that gate done, but that’s not all of it. It’s like he sees a project that needs doing and just can’t help himsellf from pitching in to get it done. He did the same thing in January. I had arranged for a pile of yard stuff I’d made tto be hauled away by another guy, for a price, and the fence guy just . . . took it. For free.
After the carpet was up, I took a shower–pulling old carpet turns out to be really dirty work–I wore a respirator for the bulk of the actual pulling–and visited the woman who is in a way responsible for my being here. She’s the one who showed me aroundd the town when I visited last summer. Then did some shopping–bought a spreader and some moss out for the lawn, among other miscellaneous items. Fighting moss iss going to be a major part of my life for the foreseeable future, I fear.
Tomorrow more carpet pulling, upstairs. I hope to get all the dog pee carpet out tomorrow. It won’t entirely get rid of the odor, but it’ll cut it down a lot–I notice a difference already. And it just feels cleaner to know all that filthy carpet is out. Makes me wonder what’s lurking under the carpet back in the CA home. But while I’ve been in that house for 11 years, I think, and various critters have done some peeing in it–NOTHING like what was done in this house. To say nothing of the fact that I clean up tthe pee, to the best of my ability. I don’t think any cleaning up of pee was done in this house recently. I’m saying now, if I ever get to the point of having a dog that habitually pees in the house and ignoring it like was obviously the case here–just shoot me. Or at least forcibly remove me and/or the critter from the house.
Time for bed. More tomorrow, if my energy lasts long enough.
