Why I now hate carpet.

This is not a good look for me.
When we first moved in, we knew we wanted to make changes. Changes that would make it our home rather than Bob and Mary's home. The blue exterior carpet had to go, the door in the guest room could be closed to hide the pink carpet, but the carpet inside we thought we'd keep. Give it a good cleaning and it was good to go.

How wrong we were.
In the common areas, we had white carpet. Not my first choice (I'm a fan of red wine and I'm clumsy -- not a good combination for white carpet), but we thought we would take a chance. We rented a steamer and got to work on the carpet, it made a difference for about 8 hours, but the stains came back. We soaked, we purchased special cleansers for pets (the previous owners had dogs), we followed the directions closely, but the stains and even the smell came back each and every time. So, we began to remove it. That's when the protective gear was necessary. There was dust, some interesting smells and so many carpet nails and staples.

Before, during and after.

I've seen so many home improvement shows where the owner of the house is pleasantly suprised to find beautiful hardwood floors underneath the carpet. We found more carpet. Really, another layer of carpet and padding. I still had some hope (although a bit diminished) that under the second layer there would be some great surprise. There wasn't. It was the subfloor. The good news is that we don't have to protect the floors as we tear down the walls. We can drop nails, tools, whatever, and we can't hurt the floor.

So what kind of flooring will we have? Wide oak planks in most of the house, tile in the bathrooms and slate of some sort in the kitchen. We have some throw rugs that we'll use, but I never need to see another carpet tack strip or padding.