Floor Progress

The floor is patched. Finally! I've made progress toward the fireplace/hearth, at which point my fabulous retired contractor friend D. will help me figure out how to mate a rhino with a lobster.

This is where super-long movies like Om Shanti Om (highly recommended, btw, and don't let the whole beginning half fool you--it's an intense love story that even my jaded DH enjoys) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy really come in handy. I've seen them so many times I don't have to really watch them. Listening transports me. I do stop and watch favorite parts, like the Pain of Disco. (Seriously, you have to watch Om Shanti Om.) But other than that I can listen to the music and the dialogue and be there while still paying attention to important things like power tools.

I've gotten far enough now that I'm starting to get that feeling that I'm actually doing some good rather than just ripping the house apart chasing a dream. Oh, and the carpet? It's outside killing grass for me so that I can expand the garden space near the house. I have so much pasture grass (far harder to deal with than tame lawn grasses) that it overwhelms the large sections of garden I've managed to create from blackberry zones. Finally connecting the garden to the proximity of the house will do magical things to the way the garden appears overall. It'll also be easier to manage.

That carpet stinks to high heaven, and the rain has actually improved it by rinsing out the worst of it. I'm once again reminded why I loathe carpeting. Seriously, it's disgusting stuff. Unless you have the money to replace it fairly often, like every five years or so, it just becomes a haven for dirt, dust, dust mites, fleas, stains and general filth. No amount of steam cleaning will get that stuff out. I know. I kept up on the steam cleaning, and it was still vile underneath when we pulled it up. Ten years of grime percolating down through the pad, permeating every layer in between, will do that.

I'm glad to be rid of it, but boy is it a lot of work to go to laminate. It's worth it. The house is tons better already, and we haven't even got a tenth of the surface area covered yet.

Okay, maybe it's over a tenth now. I've got two empty boxes, and three mostly empty ones out of thirty-ish.

And now, I must go back to work. Part two of Fellowship awaits!