At least it started out well

[inulro]

I finally started to remove the vile beige shag-pile carpet from my computer room this afternoon. It's only taken four years. There's not room to move all the stuff out, so I bought a Stanley knife to approach it in stages.

It started off very nicely - I worked out a way to take up the underlay with the carpet, thus avoiding 90% of the mess carpet removal usually generates. Unfortunately, said underlay ran out & was replaced by a variety that fights back when attacked with either knife or scissors.

At that point I had to give up anyway as the bin outside was full, and I'm not wrestling this stuff into bags.

It felt like lots of work, but less than 1/4 of the floor is visible, and I started with the parts where nothing heavy has to be moved out of the way. It's too early to tell whether the boards are salvageable - they are horrendously mangled anywhere they've ever been taken up (and put back by butchers) but other parts are quite intact. I have an awful feeling we're going to have to get more laminate flooring though.

After I gave up I settled down to watch the DVD of the week, Bright Young Things, about which I have remarkably little to say. It's simultaneously amusing and annoying, and most of the characters get more or less what they deserve.

Comments

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Floorboards don't look too bad even when they're mangled - we still have the ancient victorian ones downstairs, complete with dents, stains and woodworm holes, and they don't look too bad. Stain them a good dark colour and it covers a multitude of sins...

[inulro.livejournal.com]

It's the huge missing chunks I'm worried about. I could lose a hamster down some of those holes!

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, I was forgetting your collection of small animals! Best to put new covering down.

Have you seen you can get real wood tiles to put down? They might look/age better than laminate.