The floors...

When we first moved into the house there was very old and dirty carpet everywhere.  This picture here is standing in the front room looking toward the back of the house.  My son is standing in the dining room with hideous carpet under foot.  In the first month of being inside it was obvious that the carpet needed to go.  I went to a corner of the room and peeled back a section of the carpet.  Underneath was dark brown hardwood floors.  Before taking all the carpet up we had to attempt to determine if the floor was in good enough condition.  From what I could see
the carpet was mostly surface wear and tear, not many stains.  I took a gamble and figured that the floors were in decent enough condition.  We used a carpet cutter to cut the carpet into manageable sizes and tore it up from there.  We did the carpet pad in the same manner.  I was lucky that they didn't glue the carpet pad to the hardwood floor, as this was done in the other bedrooms, (more on that later.)  They had stapled the carpet and pad down around the edges of the room as well as randomly through the floor so the carpet

would stay down.  These staples are fairly easy to remove, being careful not to scratch the floor.  I found a straight slot screwdriver and pliers the easiest to work with.  If the staple is too far into the ground to use the pliers by themselves then carefully slide the screwdriver under the staple and twist the screwdriver so the staple pops up.  Then simply use the pliers to pull the remaining staple out.  Trust me you will get tons of practice so don't worry about being perfect.  Just do your

best not to scratch the floors.  I was very lucky with these floors.  In the pictures you see of the hardwood that is what it looked like under the floors.  Eventually these floors will need to be redone, but for now they look fantastic.  Bono hardwood floor cleaner is what has worked the best for these floors.  Keeping them clean, well that's another story. 

Many Adventures!

"A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work."   Colin Powell