Hazardous Waste

Last night, Thursday, I decided that's it, the smelly second floor hallway rug has got to go. Aesthetic considerations suggested it was a good idea to rip it out. Common decency, sanitation concerns, and olfactory peace combined to make its removal absolutely necessary. Before company arrived. Now.

(After all, who wants to think she's lost her visiting parents a nights' sleep by the prodigious pong of pet pee wafting in through the bedroom door? )

It was nasty work. The carpet was filthy and stained, its edges booby-trapped with staple-tacks like shark's teeth. (Is my tetanus shot still up to date? I hope so!) The material had to be cut in pieces to satisfy the trash hauler, but it refused to go down without a fight.

As for the pad, you'd think the installers thought it would get up in the middle of the night and sneak away. Staples everywhere! Staples through the pad material and staples in the wood floor just for the fun of it! Staples smashed into the woodwork! And as a change from staples, broad-headed mails driven down to less than flush!

Well, I got the underlayment removed and bundled for pick-up, too.

Then the tack strips around the edges had to be pried up. Nails, more staples, splinters: at any moment I expected my dog to yelp in pain because he'd picked up something in his paw.

But the job got done.

Now I want to know, what are my options with the pine board flooring underneath?

Yes, fill the nail holes, sand it, maybe restain it a different tone, finish it. But what have people done about wide cracks like I have here? What do you do when you feel you could lose a small continent down the gaps?

And don't ya just love that slope in the floor! At some points it's more than an inch below the bottom of the baseboard.

I contemplate a really big shoe moulding. But maybe there're other options I haven't thought of. That is, short of tearing the surface off and shimming it up to level?

And in other news . . . here's the new bathroom mirror trim without the grout. That happened early this morning. I'm "borrowing" what little grout I need from some friends, as soon as they remember where they put the box.