A hard and thankless job

I’ve been ripping up carpet on the third floor, and I did all of the rooms, and pulled up the carpet firring on the sides, and then prepared for what unexpectedly was the hardest part of it all— pulling up the carpeting on the stairs.

First of all, the stairs are very tight, so they are MUCH harder to pull up then the regular carpet– but even more importantly, because they are so tight, they’ve got about a million staples holding htem in place. Not only did I have to manhandle the carpet up piece at a time (and each piece is separately cut, but then I had to pull up the carpet padding which was all stapled in. Some of the staples (okay, most of them) stayed in the wood, and then I had to go up and down the floor with a screwdriver, attempting to pull out all of the staples.

I did manage to get most of them (but not all-I have a hard time shaving all of the hairs on my face, let alone physically pluck deeply embedded staples from a hardwood floor.) But I did get most of them, and it’s primarily done– I still have to go over the floors of the three rooms and pluck the most egregious staples from the floor before I feel confident enough to hire some professional carpet guy to come in and do the same.

I can tell you this though– 15 years from now– I AM not pulling up any more carpet staples– let the carpet rot, for all I care!