House Project, Part I

We are having the carpet replaced in our living room for a myriad of reasons - all good ones, we believe - so this is a totally justifiable project.  We're trying to be frugal where we can and in doing so agreed to do the following ourselves: move all the furniture out of the living room, rip up the carpet and the gross, stinky, disgusting pad that lay beneath it, clean the floors so that I don't stare at the new carpet while constantly thinking about the gross, stinky, disgusting things we found underneath the old carpet that WEREN'T JUST OURS (cigarette butt included!). 

And you know, it really wasn't that bad.  And THAT is good news because we will be tearing up the carpet in the dining room next week...and that is being replaced with cork flooring rather than carpet so tack strips and staples will need to be stripped as well. 
Deep breathing. 

We have officially crossed the line into house project insanity.

MORE GOOD NEWS (in addition to the carpet not being a TOTAL pain in the ass to rip out):



I know, I know.  You're thinking, she can't really think it's GOOD news that three tiles broke around the fireplace when they were ripping up the carpet, right?  Wrong.  This moved the "Heeeeeyyyyyy, hooooooneeeeeyyyyy, (eyes batting) I would really like to replace the tiles around the fireplace..." project from the WANT TO folder to the HAVE TO folder.  Paul wasn't quite as excited about this news as I was. 
I'm eager to see this project complete; this will require a furniture purchase or two, fireplace re-tiling (woo-hoo!), possible window treatments and a few other finishing touches.  And then lots of vodka.