Buh Bye 70’s Berber in the Kitchen

Sometimes I wonder why we didn’t do a thing sooner. Like get rid of this nasty carpet in our kitchen. It was stained long before we took over dominion of this house, and it got exponentially worse with us living in it. There were many insults: muddy boots, manure tracked in, Gene occasionally peeing on it when something upset her, Gene spilling various liquids on it when she would try to carry away food bowls and dishes with fluid in them, and us cooking and lazily letting things fall or spill on the floor. I’m already unfaithful about regular vacuuming (and Kirk sticks to the claim he does not know how to operate a vacuum :-)). And it’s not like the vacuum could even come close to addressing what was wrong with this carpet. Stylistically or cleanliness-wise.

So, we peeled it up. And the disintegrating green layer of carpet pad below it. And the layer of glued-down linoleum under that. And the layer of fiberboard stapled down under that. Then we extracted the several hundred little staples left sticking in the floor. It only took an hour or two. Now we are down to the original layer of linoleum squares, which are glued down to the fir flooring underneath. We stopped there, for now. At least now vacuuming actually gives us some sense of rendered cleanliness, and we can mop. The old school gray and white fleck linoleum would probably look pretty OK, except that it has a water stain from some kind of long-ago dishwasher or kitchen sink flooding event. And it’s missing a few tiles, and more are losing their adhesion. <sigh> We put an oval braided rug over the worst of it.The funny thing is how when you have an old house, you appreciate the little things. Kirk said, ah, now that looks SO much better! We quite admired the improvement. Even though it is still an old, stained floor. 🙂 Someday, we’ll peel up this final layer and refinish the fir. But that’s for another day. There is only one tiny rectangle of carpet left in our house, a glued-down section of red .semi-shag in the hallway. I look forward to the day of being carpet-free. I don’t understand how carpet ever gained its wild popularity. It’s lot of work to vacuum, impossible to de-stain, its appearance deteriorates after its first year, you have to worry about wearing shoes on it and ruining it.

And when you peel it up and see what hideous scum lies underneath, you realize it’s kind of a disgusting floor covering, because it’s never really clean. I’m not a clean freak by any means, but I get a little creeped out by the whole ecosystem living in and under carpet. Its only virtue is that it’s cozy under bare feet, and a throw rug achieves that too, without all of the drawbacks.