We Need Therapy

"We'll remodel one room per year. That's all."

Yup, we really said that when we first moved in. That was a year-and-a-half ago, and have we done 1.5 rooms? No, siree. We've done about eight rooms, the garage, and some of the outside. And today, just for giggles, we started on another one.

Please make it stop. Somebody plan an intervention. We can't help ourselves. We're sick, we know, but we're too weak to resist the strange urge to remodel, paint, stain, or just plain demolish. The toolbox and paintbrush call to us.

Today started out ordinary enough. A nice day where normal people go to the beach or have a picnic. But when I heard ripping noises coming from upstairs I knew what Kathy had gotten us into. She was ripping up the carpet in her office.

We'd been talking for months about removing that carpet, but always in terms of "sometime next year" and "no rush" and "we're not ready yet." The discussion always ended with, "we don't need another project."

And then the ripping noise.

It's so easy to start. Just pull up a corner of the carpet and there you go. But of course, once you start you can't stop. You can't leave the room with one corner pulled up and the rest still lying in place like nothing happened. You're not going to fool anybody. They'd know what you've been up to. No, once you start carpet ripping you have to go all the way.

It all came up pretty easily. That's the trouble. You can be done in less than an hour: Committed to refinishing the floor, moving all the furniture, and disposing of the carpet scraps and shredded foam padding. And the dust it kicks up is... too disgusting to think about. It's a filthy habit, I know. But we can't stop.

And like the floors downstairs, the wood under the carpet was completely paint-splattered. What were these people thinking? What combination of circumstances would have made that a good idea? The floor was previously painted wood, not stained like downstairs. It was dark brown, and they evidently sprayed (splattered, more like it) green paint on the walls, letting it get all over the floor in the process. They apparently knew they were going to carpet the room immediately afterwards, so they wasted no energy keeping the floor clean. Consequently, it's about half brown and half green. Charming. At first glance it looks fabulously moldy.

Anyway, now we're committed. The floor is bereft of carpet and the scraps are piled up in the garage awaiting our next trip to the dump (do they offer a frequent-customer program, I wonder?). Now Kathy and I get to sit on the floor with pliers and carefully find and remove the billions and billions of little staples and nails that held down the tack strips and padding. Every time we think we've found them all we vacuum the floor and find a few dozen more. Lather, rinse, repeat.

When that's all done, we'll strip away some of the old paint(s), fill in some of the gouges and nail holes, and then paint the floor again. (No staining for us; we've had enough of that for awhile.) But not right away. We're going to wait until after Christmas. Right.