Out with the old...and dusty.

Well Sunday was definitely not the day for rest this week. After, I am ashamed to say a terribly late start, (We're still sleeping in the basement to keep cool and it's so dark that with no alarm clock it's hard to pull ourselves up early.) we began to tear out the carpet and mouldings.

It wasn't terribly hard and our two youngest (9&10) we right there pulling staples and carrying scrap and carpet tack strips out to the trailer; jeez I hate those things. The hardest part of the whole thing was the stairs, I swear there were staples every three inches.

I made it a point to take this rather nasty picture to illustrate further why it is that we are doing all of this work. With our son being allergic to dust and mold spores, this cannot be healthy. Mind you this was a sample from one part of the floor; the total amount was quite a bit more. We are not the type to just let the house go either. My wife keeps a beautiful home for us, and is very good about regular vacuming. I was amazed to see that even though we take our shoes off, and have not quite been in this newly built home for 3 yrs that this much dirt and dust could have accumulated.

This is what we're shooting for, I guess you could call it a before and after of sorts. The left is our kitchen/dining room that we finished before we moved into the house. The right is the subfloor ready to receive wood. When we initially decided on wood, we had looked into doing tile instead. It seemed to us that the cost and the potential for it to be skewed or uneven were too high. (Attention all do-it-yourselfers: know your limits.) At any rate, it turned out cheaper, and we really wanted wood anyway. If you've ever considered doing this and thought it might be too hard, it's not really that bad.

A~'s been painting all day today, and we should begin laying flooring this weekend. I plan to document it for posterity, and as always to share with you.

P~