The Slow Teardown

Nothing has made me feel my age quite like the current home renovation project that I'm tackling.

For nearly two weeks, I've been ripping up the carpet that has flowed down our staircase since we bought our house, more than 26 years ago. It's seen spills, cat claws, and cat barf, and we should have replaced it years ago.

When we decided to tear up all of the carpeting on the second floor, replacing it with hardwood, we meant to do the stairs at the same time. When a flooring company gave us a quote to redo the floor and stairs, we nearly added human barf to the carpet. The stairs alone were going to set us back more than 25 grand.

We opted to do the hardwood on the second floor ourselves and we would think about what we'd do with the stairs later. Our work certainly doesn't look professional but we're happy with how the floor turned out.

Last fall, we decided that we'd save money and just have the staircase re-carpeted. We found some cat-friendly carpet (there are no loops of woven fabric for cat nails to catch) by a Canadian manufacturer and came to a decision that we weren't going to make any major colour choices.

We learned that if we tore up the old carpet, ourselves, we could save ourself another couple of grand on the installation fee. Last December, I started work on the project but became distracted by out-of-town guests, Christmas, Costa Rica, and my novel.

At the start of last week, I promised myself that I would spend a couple of hours each day (Monday to Friday) ripping up the carpet. There was one day, when I was feeling sick and didn't have the energy to rip up fabric, and another day, this week, when I had a paying acting gig to which I had committed (I'll share that story when I'm allowed to talk about it).

Ripping up the carpet is hard work. At least, this one is. I find myself twisting my torso as I balance on steps and pull up the fabric. And whoever laid this carpet went crazy with the staple gun: I know the carpet had to be perfectly secure but did it take dozens of staples per step?

Most of the staples are clustered around the part that wraps around the corners and ends of a step, and these areas are tricky to reach as it is. And, at some point, the staple gun that was used started firing two staples at a time, so I had at least twice the effort in some spots.

My pace has not been speedy by any sense of imagination. I've been unable to complete more than two steps per day, and they've taken me almost three hours. By lunchtime, I'm exhausted.

I'm finally down to the last two steps and I'm hoping to be done today. These steps will be the most challenging because the carpet wraps around the step on both sides and they are so low to the ground that I'll have to lie on my stomach to be able to see and get a grip on the staples.

I've left a few bits of fabric up the stairs that are held with stubborn staples. I'll try to get more of them out but this weekend, DW and I will return to the carpet store and book a date for when they can come and install the carpet.

And hopefully, no cat will barf on it (though, I'm not holding my breath).