New Carpet Day 2-4 - Hallway and Stairs

By day two, I was already pretty tired of the whole carpet thing. But only a little bit left - just the hallway and stairs to go. As it turned out, I ended up splitting up the rest of the work over Monday and Tuesday. We had all sorts of other appointments (Doctor's appointment, closing at Barnes and Nobles (don't ask), child-birth classes - oh, and that work thing as well). So, first I tackled the stairs. Starting from the top, I cut off a chunk and started ripping. Thankfully, the stairs were more conventional - padding stapled to the wood with carpet stapled down over it. Much easier to remove (although tedious to get all those staples). One funny thing was that there was a ton of sand under the pad on the bare wood. Not just a bit, a ton. It certainly convinced me that people should take off their shoes in the house. I think that the sand made its way through the pad where upstairs it was trapped by the under-carpet.

Due to lack of time, I finished Monday only having done 80% of the stairs. Oddly, the top stairs were all one, continuous piece of carpet. At the bottom, each step consisted of a separate piece. I believe this is because the bottom steps had to be wrapped under and stapled instead of just going to the wall. Tuesday I finished off the stairs and started on the hallway. I finally found out what that lump was that we had felt for the past three years - a big nail was sticking up at the top of the stairs. A few gentle taps with a hammer (which I had been meaning to do for years since I figured it was a nail) and no more lump. A little while longer and the hallway was done. All that left was vacuuming one more time to get rid of all the bits of pad. Oh, and dragging all the pulled up carpet and pad to the curb in the hopes that the garbage men would take it on Friday. Wednesday night all I did was drag out the trash. We didn't get back from child-birth classes until late and it was a lot of crap to drag out. I put off vacuuming till Thursday morning. We were expecting the guys to show up around 8:30 - 9:00 AM and I figured I could get it done starting around 7:00 AM (sorry neighbors).

Next came Days 5 New Carpet Installed