So the quote for a full hardwood floor install for the three carpeted bedrooms came in at just about $11K – we were hoping for under $10K, so we are attempting to save a bit of money. I know I said I was going to DIY it, but for a variety of reasons, I don’t want to move about 2,000 pounds of material into the house, up the stairs and then try to install the whole thing attempting to get it straight. If we were going to do luxury vinyl floating floor, I might have more seriously considered doing it myself. First, we are going to drop the red oak from “select grade” to “character grade” which means there is going to be more line and color variation within the wood slabs and there might be some wormholes, but still within the grouping of the hardwood floor brand recommended by consumer reports. We like the more varied look (at least we say that we do), and I’m hoping to save a dollar a square foot. The other place that we are going to try to same some money is to do the carpet removal ourselves. So I watched a bunch of youtube videos and with some encouragement from Jeremy, I started in on the guest room. I had all the tools on hand and I estimated that all three rooms would take me 15 hours. But I was pleasantly surprised that it was much easier than I thought it would be and I finished ripping out everything in the smallest bedroom, the rug, the padding, the staples and the tack strips in just about 2 hours.
Carpet is so gross. Really. And this is 15 year old carpet – through many, many residents and many, many pets.
All done.
I’m very grateful for my body to be able to do this work close to the floor. I’m very comfortable in a squat position and spent most of the time squatting down and not kneeling (if one kneels, one should invest in knee pads) and I woke up this morning feeling not at all sore from the labor. Even though I do mostly want to save the money, I also enjoyed the couple of hours of steady work and to see the progress of my efforts. There is some joy that I get from that – I’m in a better mood. I do hope Jeremy can help in the other rooms and though he can squat now after a couple of years of flexibility work, it still doesn’t come as naturally to him as it does to me. So maybe or maybe not. Maybe he can just help get the rements to the dump for me.
