About six months ago, I finally decided to remove all of the nasty, ’70s shag carpeting from the stairs going to our relatively unused upstairs. So it wasn’t the most pressing project, but picturing the nastiness that was living in those polyester strands was starting to keep me up at night.
For example, I am certain that there was lots of dog hair in it from dogs I have never met. Ew.
Either way, it was me or the carpet, so I collected my husband’s tools, changed into work clothes and set to work. Only to discover that the project was going to be much harder than I anticipated.
Here’s the before pictures–great swaths of yellow shag horror. Well, mostly yellow anyway.
So I set about ripping out the carpet. Which kind of sounds fun. It was…for about 30 seconds.
Until I discovered that every single stair was individually carpeted. With approximately 70 staples holding the carpet in place.
Seriously? Who does that?
So instead of getting a single, satisfying, stair-clearing riiiiiip!, I got to spend 2.5 weekends painstakingly removing carpet remnants from each step. Was it worth it?
Oh hell yes.
DI...wait, what? 