Thanks Outkast, for creating that song that is. Because our house now feels so fresh and so clean clean. Why you ask? Well that would be because we got new carpet installed!
We currently have carpeting in both of the front rooms in our house aka the office and the use to be dining room(now second living room) and both guest rooms. They have all seen better days, but the front two rooms seem to have taken more abuse. The culprit of the abuse would be the previous owners cat. I know grrross. This change was something that probably should have happened a while ago. We rarely even spend time in these two rooms, but when you sit on the floor or get close to the floor you get a nice cat urine smell. I know it’s one of my fav smells too, but I had to part with it.
Before we started ripping carpet up, we thought it might be best to head over to Lowes and check out some options. After talking with the flooring associate we decided to go with a Stainmaster carpet.
We narrowed it down to one of these three. My vote was for the top choice and we actually took a sample piece home to place in the room and let it simmer with us. Well it simmered and we thought it might be a bit too dark, so we ended up going with the one in the middle.
We knew it would be about a week before the installation could be done, but Justin had had enough of the cat pee carpet and decided to tear it up. We also figured this way we could get the concrete below nice and clean before the installation happened. Otherwise, we would be running around trying to clean while the installers wait on us. So, Justin went to town pulling up the old carpet….
Take a look at that right corner. Pretty grotie right?
The carpet and pad were held down by some glue and tack strips. You can usually leave the tack strip in place and reuse them with the new carpet, but we decided ours needed to come up.
See that corner that looks damp? Ya, apparently that is just stained with urine. I’ll vomit now.
Once the carpet was up, he worked on the padding underneath. Most of it came right up, but a few spots took a little extra effort.
Char man supervised of course…
He looks just as thrilled as I am sure you are at this post. Interesting stuff.
Once the carpet and padding were gone fo’ good there was still a faint urine smell. Ugh!! Yuck. We did what we normally do and googled our hearts out till Justin found that hydrogen peroxide might do the trick. Once the floor was scrubbed with hydrogen peroxide, bleach and vinegar you could STILL smell it! So our last resort was to seal the floor with an oil based sealant. Justin picked some up at Lowe’s and rolled it on the floor in all the corners. After two coats the smell is finally gone. Thank goodness. I apparently didn’t get any shots of this sealing action, but it pretty much looked like he was rolling white paint onto the concrete floor. Also exciting stuff.
Since the smell was gone for good, we just had to wait for the installers to come so we could enjoy our new carpet, what what! We would have considered doing the installation ourselves, but Lowe’s offered free installation if we were purchasing stainmaster carpeting and what-do-you-know that’s just what we had ordered. We figured leave the job to the professionals since it’s free, amiright?
The installer was a one man show and he was quick! He came and went in an instant and was super nice to boot.
Look at that fresh carpeting, I wish you could feel it under your feet! So nice and comfy. We decided to go with a tucking method next to the tile. This way we didn’t have any seam covering, like the metal or wood ones that you see in some homes.
I can’t even tell you how happy I am that we did not go with the darker color. This carpet is pretty dark itself and I think I would have hated our original choice. Dodged a bullet there!
It looks very different in a lot of these photos due to the lighting situation(it’s not the best room for photos.) The photo above is probably the best representation of the true color.
When we put our furniture back we decided to go with a different arrangement. We felt a little cramped with our previous set up, this somehow makes it feel more open.
You may have also noticed that the art that used to be above our living room couch is now hanging out here. I thought it popped a bit more on the green walls, it use to blend so much with the walls in the living room…
See how much the frame blended right into the paint color? I think it’s much happier out here…
I think we are a far cry from what we started with…
Don’t you?
The Mace Place 