Fatigue and Satisfaction

This morning I woke up with a 56-year old man in my bed. Yes, it is Sam's birthday and we are celebrating by tearing up our floors. After the day we've spent, he doesn't feel 56. He feels 99 years old. So do I.

It all started over a year ago. I couldn't breathe at night and kept waking up with a dry mouth. My head was consistently congested and Sam kept telling me to roll over and face the wall because I was snoring so loudly. Then his asthma kicked up and he'd come to bed wheezing like a concertina. We promptly went in and got allergy testing. It was an interesting process, getting pricked with little tines all up and down our arms. After measuring some of the larger welts that came up we realized that we are both highly allergic to dust and moderately allergic to cats. Rather than say goodbye to Otis, we invested in a high quality mobile air filter. We cleared up quickly.

But we have considerable trouble if we don't have our filter going. It's probably due to the old, dirty carpet that we have in the house. It was filthy when we got here and using a Dyson plus getting it professionally shampooed didn't really improve it that much. So we began considering the possibility of putting in wood floors. Then we can just swipe a damp dust mop over it a couple times a week and get rid of the dust easily.

The search for the perfect flooring began. Being a do-it-yourself maven, I naturally wanted to buy the flooring and install it myself. I've been known to bite off more than I can chew, so Sam was a bit leary about this. We have 1400 square feet to put down, including the staircase. That excludes three bathrooms and the den, which has ceramic tile on the floor.

We asked a couple handymen to come give us estimates. They said they would charge us between $2000 - $4000 to install it for us. On top of the flooring, that could easily run $6000 just to purchase. We called a company in the area that advertises that if you purchase two rooms worth of carpet or flooring, they will install the rest in the house for free. The guy who came out measured the house (and came up with the exact measurement that I did, which was good confirmation that I can measure properly!) But then he told us that the total cost to use would be $24,000. Are you kidding? Even at Lowe's we could get all the flooring we would need for $2.89 per square foot which would come in way below his price. He couldn't give us a breakdown of installation, products, etc. and kept telling us that his was the best deal in town. We reported him to his company's headquarters and kept looking.

Long story short, we found a family owned flooring outlet about 30 miles from us where we found some lovely distressed, handscraped laminate flooring. It is thick and has lovely coloring (if you click on the hyperlink you can scroll down on the website and see it). They were such friendly people and gave us a discount on the high quality underlayment and threw in the installation kit for free. We ended up purchasing 108 cartons of flooring and 14 rolls of underlayment. Total cost: $3300, plus $120 for a Black and Decker chop saw (YAY! more power tools for Barbara!)

So back to today. Since we pulled up the carpet in one upstairs bedroom yesterday, all that we had to do today was to pull up the carpet in the second bedroom, remove the carpet tack strips, level the floor and clean it all out. I ended by cutting the underlayment to fit one of the rooms. Fatigue overcame both Sam and me, and we flopped down on the couch a couple hours ago, nearly drifting into a coma. We are sooo worn out!

The puppies slept through almost all the pounding and hefting of carpet down the stairs. It was only when I put them in the backyard after their sleepy time that I heard a frenzy of barking. There they were, with their little legs stiff in defiance, barking their heads off at the heap of old carpet out at the side of the house. Territorial little guys!

Unfortunately, we realized that a chop saw isn't all that we need to install the flooring. We need a table saw, which we will need to borrow in the next day or so. For now, we are dozing on the couch, almost prostrate with exhaustion. We chose quite an activity today to celebrate increasing age! Will keep you posted and upload pictures of the finished business. Don't hold your breath...