Prepping the house for sale - carpeting project

Like I said in yesterday's blog, we are going gangbusters to get the house ready to put on the market.  We spent the last week decluttering and getting the kids to come and get pieces of furniture we no longer need in the house.  We got the whole kitchen painted, all the sections around the cabinets, up above and between, and then the ceiling too.  That came out nice on Sunday and we were pleased with the results.

We had little Chelsea here overnight last night, so we took a bit of a break.  I snapped this pic of a certain little imp, when my computer kept mysteriously rebooting......   No wonder why!!!  That is where my POWER button is!

This morning she woke up all smiles and giggles, and we had a great snuggly morning before I took her off to the day care center.  We called her in late to her daycare group and said she was playing HOOKY!   She loved the word and kept chanting it over and over.  Rhymes with COOKIE!   After a fun breakfast with her, I took her into the daycare center.  With wails of tears and dramatics, she didn't want her Granmuddah to leave!  I hung around for a while, and when she was thoroughly spoiled rotten, then it was time for ME to leave and get to work on the house.


I hauled down the rest of the clothes from our walk-in closet/changing room, and the shoe rack unit and hampers... stuffing them all down in the guest bedroom for now.  Then it was time to paint!  I cut in and rolled out the paint on the walls, and it got darker as it dried.  Oh my!  It was not quite the color I wanted, but oh well, I am not going to live here, right???

Those pine tree swinging doors are from wood we had sawn from big pines that blew down the first year we moved here.  We had a portable sawmill come and cut out planks that we used for the shutters on the outside, the doors on this changing room off the master bath, and then all the 2x4's to build the garage! From ONE giant white pine tree!  Oh, and the log mantle over the fireplace was from the top of the tree.

The pine tree cutout motif we *borrowed* one Sunday afternoon from a logging implement company in the UP of Michigan. I made Heather (then about 12 or 13 years old)  hold up a paper bag while I traced the pine tree pattern from the cutouts along their railing on their office!   LOL  She was mortified, and I was happy to embarrass her for once.

I was done painting the walk-in closet room in no time, and the paint dried nicely. When Steve got home, we put the brackets and rods back up.  Then it was time to start tearing out carpeting!!!   We ripped out the carpet in the changing room in the pics above...

We also removed the carpeting on the landing and steps leading into the bathroom...  there are two steps up, then across the landing, and two steps down into the bathroom.  Up to the left in the photo are the log steps that lead into the loft where our master bedroom is.

Now comes the BIG JOB!  We moved all of the furniture into the dining area, shoving it all up close and tight to get it all off the livingroom carpet.  We shoved the couch along the railing to the lower level, and piled the coffee table and end table on top of the couch. 

Some certain dogs were NOT much help, as you can see!!!

We pulled the carpeting all loose from the fireplace hearth, and then started rolling it up across the floor... the livingroom is 23 feet long by 12 feet wide so it was quite heavy for the two of us.   We decided to leave it all in one hunk, in case someone can use it for a cottage or someplace.  There are some stains here and there, and a few worn areas.   The new stuff coming will be darker!

Again, those dogs are NOT much help!   

The more we tried to move them around, the more they laid in the way.  

We almost rolled them up into the rug! 

We pulled up the pad too, and got it all out.  Steve had to crawl around on hands and knees to pull out the staples left behind from the pad.  Once that was done, the room seemed HUGE! 

The house feels funny without the carpeting.  It echoes!  It reminded me of when we were first building it 15 years ago.  At that time we considered doing hardwood floors throughout, but the loud clattering echoes with 18 foot high ceilings made up our mind to do carpeting instead. Good choice!

On Saturday, we also removed half of the carpeting in the loft master bedroom.  We did half already because my brother's friend needed it.  So for now we have the king sized bed shoved to one side, and we will removed the other half tomorrow evening and put the king sized bed down into the hopefully finished livingroom.  That way the loft can be cleared open wide to do the new carpet up there on Thursday.  That piece leftover in the cream we are going to install down in the guest bedroom because it's still in pretty good shape.  

I also got the wall behind the bed painted yesterday too.  Almost the same color, but freshened it up and made it look good....

Tomorrow morning the carpet installer is coming at 8 am.  We ordered all of the same color carpeting, enough to do the loft, livingroom, stairs landing and changing room.  He will install all four areas for us, as it will save on Steve's knees.  We had always done our own work in the past, including all the work on building this house ourselves after buying just the log shell.  We did all of our own plumbing, electrical, insulation, laying tile, hanging cabinets, etc. beside laying all the original carpeting. 

So this is strange to have someone come in and do the work for us!  He is only charging us $500 for the installation work in all four areas after purchasing all the carpeting and pad from him.  Plus, he gave us a good deal on the carpeting because he was ordering a full roll of this particular kind, and we liked it enough to say "Sure"!  Besides, being the installer, he is a the owner of this little carpet shop in town, and we are trying to keep our purchases local.  Rather than the big box stores like Home Depot or Menards.  He was priced right and we are glad to give our hard-earned dollars to a local hardworking businessman. 

Well, Steveio is snoring here, so I should post this and get to sleep too.  

P.S. Steve has a huge gooseegg knob on his shin, because he forgot that he put the coffee table down off the couch so the dog could hop up to sleep on it yet tonight.  He walked by and slammed his shin right into the table.. ouch!   Hope it goes down tomorrow!

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