31 October 2008

My Dining Room Hardwood Floor

This picture was taken behind the table featured a few posts ago. When we first moved into this house, we quickly discovered that every carpet in the house REEKED of dog urine. I don't know how, but we never noticed it on our tours, perhaps because we never sat on the floor. Next time I buy a house, I will leave the a/c off for an hour and roll on the floor, sniffing in the corners as part of the inspection. Yes, I will. I'll also interview the neighbours and ask them what they think about the area. That saved us from buying a beautiful old place with lots of bedrooms and huge cement lions, gates and the whole works. The school next door let us know that well, the police try, but kids like to hang out and cause trouble over there... Usually when someone nicely tells you um, THEY sure wouldn't buy a house there... you know it's probably not going to work out well. After we moved in here, we ripped up the carpet in most of the rooms and this is about the quality of the hardwoods underneath throughout the house. This is the quality... AFTER cleaning and scrubbing. This is as "clean" and shiny as it gets. We had a lot of gum and paint and cigarette butts under the carpet and padding. And a lot of sandy dirt! I don't know how, even with diligent vacuuming, floors could be that filthy underneath. I don't think I ever want wall-to-wall carpeting again. It hides far too many sins.

6 comments:

  1. Yuck! When I was a teen we moved into a house that we had been renting out, and found a similar situation. That was so gross.

    You know, we had carpet in all of my chilhood homes, but now that I live in a place without I can't imagine going back. Sometimes when I clean all of the gunk off of our floor I realize how much dirt and yuck our carpets were hinding all that time. EEEW!

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  2. I agree that carpets are gross. Everything just sinks to the bottom underneath & we have always owned cats so it just becomes a breeding ground for things you don't want. I think bare floors are much, MUCH cleaner!

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  3. Awwww I like my carpet! It's clean I PROMISE!!!! NO animal piddle anywhere, no fleas, no nasties lurking under it at all! I am sad you had such an awful job to do to fix your floors. You have done an AMAZING job making them look so lovely again.

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  4. We have a cop in our town who moonlights by restoring hardwood floors (a business passed down by his father and mother). It was the best money we spend on our house!!!!

    May you find a floor cop like ours! :-)

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  5. My wife likes hardwood, but I prefer carpet. Carpet is much easier on the feet.

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  6. We put laminate floors in the basement so that we could keep the area cleaner for Ron. He has quite bad asthma. I have to say, it is much harder to keep the downstairs looking nice. Upstairs a flick of the vacuum, a few vacuum marks on the carpet and things look good... I know I am hiding a multitude of sins, but carpeting seems to match my housekeeping style much better.

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Non-troll comments always welcome! :)

Bringing Garbage Home

Some people up the street were throwing this table away. It was in pretty bad shape and one of the legs was off. I've glued the leg back...