Stripped!

The floor, that is. It's bare now.

We used to have nasty old carpet all over most of the apartment.

When we came to see the apartment before actually making an offer, we saw that the carpet was already peeling off the floor in one corner. True enough, it was quite easy to pull the carpet off. It was what came after that wasn't so easy. But let's start from the beginning.

We first cut a section of the carpet with a utility knife so it's easier to manage...

Then pulled it off the walls and floor...

And rolled it up.

Then we did the same thing with the foam padding that was underneath the carpet.

And now the concrete sub-floor was visible. See the roll of carpet that's in front in the photo above? It was too long so I had to use a utility knife to cut it in half. That was actually harder than just cutting it before rolling it up.

And see all the stains on the carpet? That's why I vowed, then and there, never to install carpet in any of my future homes. We had to wear a mask because of all the dust that was trapped in the carpet. And dust mites were probably flying all over the place, too, when we were flinging all that old carpet around. *shudder*

Creepy invisible critters probably hiding in  your carpet.

Anyway, the other difficult thing was removing the tack strips around the room. These were the wooden strips that held the carpet in place. Vee used a hammer, a chisel and a pry bar to remove them. Then he used the back of the hammer to remove any tacks left in the concrete. The tacks left little holes in the concrete (experts in DIY forums call them "divots", apparently). But we're going to cover the holes with new flooring anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

Those tacks looked really, really sharp and scary, by the way.

I freaked out a little every time I saw these strips, just as I do every time I see anything sharp. I blame Final Destination for the mental images in my head of flying sharp things trying to kill people. More than once I had the image of an inanimate object deliberately tripping me and me falling, head-first, onto those tacks. Damn you, Final Destination. *shake fist*

Anyway, I then removed the baseboards on the walls. This was actually pretty easy. I first used a utility knife to separate the baseboard from the wall if any paint was in the crack.

Then, I stuck a putty knife in the crack between the baseboard and the wall and wiggled it around to separate the baseboard from the wall. When there was enough space, I wedged a pry bar in the crack and pulled outward at an angle. I started at one end of the wall and slowly moved to the other end. This was pretty easy and was actually rather fun.

And finally, the floor was stripped down to its birthday suit.

That took about a whole week to finish, since we had work to do. One day, Vee went there early and said he got a surprise for me. Turned out he stripped the tiled portion all by himself with a pry bar. He had a hammer and a chisel, too, but turned out the tiles were pretty easy to remove for my stalwart, hard-as-nails hunk of a man.

A little background. We used to have a weird tiled patch on the floor in the entryway to our apartment. The door at the top left corner of the photo leads to the apartment hallway. The door on the left side of the photo leads to the bathroom and the floor is vinyl there. The top right corner is the kitchen with vinyl floor. And the gray line at the bottom right corner of the photo marked where the tile ended and the carpet begun. So it was just this small section that was tiled. And it bugged the hell out of both of us because it was so weird and awkward.

But anyway, they're all gone now, so we're happy. Good riddance, tiles and carpet!