What's First To Go: Phase I

Something's gotta be the first to go. For the past couple of weeks, our mission has been to see what is underneath all this carpet. Call me crazy, but this process has been a lot of fun -- especially when the reward is beautiful hardwood floors underneath.

It's hard to tell from the pictures, but this is a very big house -- over 2200 square feet in all. It's a roomy house!

First, we tackled what's going to be the music room. It had an 80s light green carpet with weird padding underneath that left all this black residue and dust behind (yuck). But looka that floor!
Some pretty features this room has: built in bookcase, window shutters,  and a tile fireplace.
Oooooo!

The ceiling tiles have that office building kind of vibe ;)

The ceilings in the music room were lowered. Twice. After John's Dad lifted up the tile, there was actually a light fixture previous owners completely covered up, plus the ceiling above that. Meanwhile, the suspense!
The leftover black grime swept right up, thankfully. Looks good overall!
AFTER: Getcha a good look.
On to the next room!

This once lovely green carpet that covered the floors in the entryway, living room, and dining room was dusty, musty, and dry.
Living Room features: that fireplace, large pocket doors, window shutters.
A view from the corner of the den. Through the right door is the music room, and to the left, the entryway hall.  >>That dude came with the house.
A different view, looking into the living room from the music room.

The carpet ripped up fairly easily. Underneath all the carpet is this awesome yellow padding... sarcasm. Ever heard of it?

Some of it was still spongy and pulled up easily; but, areas of the floor that saw a lot of foot traffic, the padding was completely trampled and disintegrated. A fine yalla dust coated the floor. UGH!!
I know you can't really see it here, but there is an unstained section in the middle of the floor where previous owners stained everything around it and put a rug over it. Apparently it was a thing. I love it!
Trying to avoid a potential weird lung disease from all the black and yellow padding dust, respectively.
Pulling up the carpet completely transformed these rooms! It's truly amazing. This phase makes it easier to visualize our options. We want to keep the house as original as we can and there are so many things to think about!

Sweep it up, Bub.
AFTER: Getcha a look.
After the carpet and padding, the time came to pull up the tacking strips around the edge of the room and all the staples out of the floor. John tackled the tacking strips with his man-strength, while I pulled out staples and swept up yellow padding gunk. I tried getting a few tacking strips up myself but didn't get very far.  They were tightly nailed down. I'm sure there are plenty of women who can do it without a problem; but, I have an angry lower back and my strengths happen to lie elsewhere in this process :)

One thing we love to do on our breaks is take a folding chair and sit on the front porch. Over the past couple of weeks, we've been in the springtime sweet spot: balmy sunny days with a breeze. From the porch we can take in the view of the neighborhood, enjoy the pink dogwood blooms, and notice the Hastas growing bigger by the day.

Phase I complete. Feels good!

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