Hardwood heaven

The past few weeks have been a flurry of home improvement activity. We are frantically trying to get ready for the move next week!

A thousand million thanks to Drew and Mark for helping me rip out the carpet at our new house a couple weeks ago! Wendi and I have spent a lot of time since then yanking out exactly 896,722,933 staples from the floors. We also ripped out the ugly wallpapered paneling that covered up the natural wood walls in the living room... let's just say that the prybar that Mark left behind got a lot of use. Thanks again Mark, you can have your prybar back anytime you want.

There was about two decades' worth of dirt underneath the carpet. In places it was a quarter inch deep, and it reinforced my vow to never live with carpet again! We have lived in too many apartments with ugly, worn-out, filthy carpet to ever live that way again if we can help it. It doesn't matter how much you vacuum it, dirt builds up under the padding and just stays there. Who knows what kind of vermin thrive in places like that, inches away from you! I hate carpet.

But lovely floors and walls were revealed after all this hard work.... behold!

The living room with real wood paneling.


The living room again.

Who is that scary man with the wild hair at the end of the hall? Notice the dirt worn into the otherwise lovely hardwood :-(

This is the "master bedroom" which is not really so huge. We really hate this color blue and plan to paint it a nice earth tone at some point.

We are tentatively planning to use this bedroom as a study.

In places the dirt was too worn into the finish to be removed, so we are having them refinished and are crossing our fingers in hopes the job will be done by the time we move next Saturday. Once you have hardwood floors, you never go back, man.

Finally, a lovely sunset turned the sky bubblegum pink and gossamer orange. Really spectacular sunset. Love that air pollution.