So while Maggie was in Albuquerque last week, Bill and I got down and dirty with the kitchen carpet. I still don't understand why anyone would decide to put carpet in the kitchen and laundry room. But whatever. We just know we didn't want it anymore. It was ugly, it was dirty, it was stinky, and it wasn't the greatest for potty training a naked child.
So we got down to business. We knew that it was ugly old linoleum under there, partially scraped off, partially covered in glue from some previous layer. And we were not happily disappointed. Mostly though, there was just a lot of dirt. Decades of fine particles sifting through the carpet and pad to be trapped on top of that confetti linoleum. Yuck!
We went to the big chain home improvement store and bought the cheapest laminate flooring we could find. When we redo the entire kitchen in a few years, we want something easy to remove, and something that wasn't a big financial investment for that short time. Thanks to some help from Santa in the form of gift certificates, this project cost us just under $100.
And boy was that a good price for the results! We feel cleaner, healthier, less embarrassed -- just better. It's not perfect. If you're a contractor or perfectionist, you may not want to look too closely. But it sure feels like a thousand times better to us, and it will certainly do the job.
Oh, and guess how many boards we had left over at the end. Zero! Last board in the last box filled the last hole. Booyat!
