Young House Love

Home Decorating & DIY Tutorials

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Removing An Old Carpet And Staples

We’ve never been more all over the place than we have been lately (Clara’s room, the master bath, the kitchen, the sunroom veranda) and we can’t believe it has been around a month and a half since we last mentioned our staircase. Several of you have been eager to hear about the new runner that we ordered, and we’ve been eager to tell you all about it (it was back-ordered and arrived a little behind schedule, but it’s finally here). But the last vestiges of the old carpet in this house were standing in our new runner’s way…

Stairs Before

When we finally removed the carpet from our master bath, the stairs became the sole remaining carpet location – even though we had ripped it off the top step in order to install the hardwoods back in May. But between avoiding the tedium of the task and worrying about a small dog and a small human navigating those slick uncarpeted steps, we’ve just been living with this lovely situation for the last five months.

Stairs Before Detail

But with our new runner just glaring at us from within its packaging for the last several weeks, we decided to start chipping away at the eyesore once again. You know, for the sake of the puppies.

Stair Dash Albert Rug

The task really wasn’t that hard. It was just boring and meticulous. Here were our weapons of choice, basically all serving the purpose of prying things up (carpet, tack strips, staples) at varying levels of detail and care (crowbar for yanking up carpet, pliers for delicately twisting stuck staples out).

Stairs 1 Tools

Once the crowbar helped me loosen a corner or two of the carpet, it was fairly easy to just yank it up by hand. Well, by gloved hand since the carpet was rife with staples and other sharp objects determined to pincushion me to death.

Stairs 2 Peeling Back

It’s what lurked beneath the carpet that was the true joy (italics = heavy sarcasm) of this project. Sure, the blue foam padding was quick to tear up… but the staples. OH THE STAPLES.

Stairs 4 Padding Removed

You can’t even really tell in these pictures just how many staples there were. So I decided to mark them (along with the nails holding down the tack strip) with yellow dots. I’ll save you from counting. There are 49. Multiply that by 12 steps and it’s nearly 600 things that Sherry and I had the pleasure of prying up.

Stairs 5 Yellow Dots

Most of them weren’t that hard. We could just stick a flathead screwdriver under and pop them up. Usually only one side came lose from the wood, so we’d have to go back and pluck it out completely with the pliers. But some got stuck. Some broke. And at least one or two made us mutter some not-Clara-approved words under our breath as we went.

Stairs 6 Detail

Slowly and steadily, we stripped each step clean of its metal and moved on to the next one.

Stairs 7 Cleared

We worked on it over the course of three days on and off, so Sherry would steal a few hours here and there and then tag team me and I’d go back in. All told it was probably around seven hours in total. And if we were to play you a montage of the process, it would basically just be a bunch of Burger cameos. I’m not sure if working on the stairs just made us notice all the times he goes and up down on a normal day, or if he increased his usual number of trips just to satisfy his curiosity about what the heck we were doing. Yes, that’s him doing some stretching in the middle of the staircase.

Stairs Burger 2

I’m mostly convinced he just wanted to be near us (there was one point where Sherry was leaning forward, full of concentration, and got some Burger tongue to the nose). I also had a particularly hilarious run-in with him when he was sitting on the carpet that I was about to rip up.

Stairs Burger 3

Here we are, at the end of our montage, with a completely carpet-less staircase and (more importantly) and completely carpet-less house. So one of Sherry’s before-I-have-this-baby goals has officially been met. And she’s pretty jazzed about it. Just don’t mention staple removal to her. There will be grumbling.

Stairs Done1

The wood left behind is in good, but not flawless condition. It’s not very scratched up, which is a relief considering all of the pointy tools we had near it, but there are some little more-noticeable staple holes in a few spots (these two steps on the bottom of the photo above are the worst, so we wonder if they used a different tool or re-stapled them here for some reason).

We still plan to paint the stair risers white – but not the treads (like this) – so that should help to hide most of the tiny holes (we can putty them before we paint). For the tread holes, the new runner should cover most of them and we’re hoping to do the same thing we did to fix up our downstairs floors before installing the runner, which should fill/hide some other slight imperfections. Note: we’re not planning to change the color of the stair treads since they flow into the upstairs flooring, which we chose to be a very close match.

Stairs Done11

One other step that we had to tackle before runner-time was painting the walls and the ceiling leading up the stairs, since we didn’t want to do that after installing the runner and risk dripping paint on it. But we’re glad to report that we knocked that out too! We thought it would be fast and easy (it’s not too much actual ground to cover) but the fact that it involved balancing on a ladder with a giant roller pole did add a few levels of difficulty (it was about 16 feet high in some points) – which is why this terrible picture is the only one we managed to capture of the process.

  Stairs Painting

I also used our tape-the-paint-brush-to-the-pole method (detailed here) to get into those upper corners. All told, that was about another 3 hours of work, but it’s really nice to have it done. As planned, we used the same Edgecomb Gray color that we used in our foyer (we chose that knowing we’d use it up the stairs and in the upstairs hallway too). You can see where we stopped painting by the arrows along those two edges. We just wanted to do enough so we wouldn’t worry about dripping on the new stair runner, but tackling the entire hall means buying another gallon.

Painted Stair Walls2

Hopefully early week will be the full runner reveal, assuming we can get those risers painted and dry in time! But the good news is that in the meantime both Clara and Burger have had no trouble on the carpet-less stairs. They’re not really slick at all (maybe from years of being lightly worn under a carpet?) so we’ve mostly put that worry to bed. But we’re still excited to add the new runner, just to be safe and to soften the blow if ever do lose our footing.

Is anyone else removing old carpeting and plucking every last staple out by hand? Does it make you rue the day that staples were invented? Yeah, me too.

Comments

  1. Dusa says

    Oh I feel your pain (physically and mentally). Did the staple ripping thing two years ago on our old farmhouse steps. Sooooo disgusting. Soooo many staples. Soooo much of my life I won’t get back. But having the carpet gone makes it all worth while.

    Reply

  2. Natalie Seum says

    So beautiful! We have the same stairwell, with the large blank wall facing you as you walk down the stairs. Do you have any creative plans for that wall, or the side walls for that matter? I was thinking about hanging barn wood or a tall piece of art.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I think art too, but I’m not sure how much or what colors or how we’ll arrange it… might have to play around with some posterboard or paper bags to see what layouts we like!

      xo
      s

  3. Megan F says

    I haven’t read thru all the comments yet so please disregard if you’ve already had this question…
    We have the same situation in our stairwell to the basement: high ceilings, hard to get to walls. Did you just use a ladder? Scaffolding? We’d like to deal with it ourselves but I’m nervous about how to go about it. Any advice? Thanks!

    Reply

  4. Jennifer says

    I can’t wait to see what you guys do with the walls around the stairs, especially the part you see when you are standing at the top of the stairs looking down- our new house has a wall just like it and I am always in a quandry over it.

    Reply

  6. Taurie says

    Burger cracks me up. My chihuahua is the same way… She always has to be sitting directly on top of whatever we’re doing. If my boyfriend is doing homework on the floor, her little butt is either on his textbook or on his laptop, closing all of his programs. Oh and I can’t fold big blankets on the floor anymore. She’s nuts :)

    I can totally understand now why he’s always in all of your photos. And because he’s pretty cute!

    Reply

  8. Allen says

    Everything looks great, so inspiring, blah blah blah…

    What on earth is up the molding around the top of the railing on the right?!? I’ve noticed it before and I can’t figure it out!

    Also, I get the impression that the new runner is a little more textured, jute-y maybe, so that might help with slippage.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, thanks Allen! Yes, the new runner should be more nubby, so I think since we have been ok not slipping on the soft/plush old carpeting, the new stuff will hopefully only add more grip. As for the molding, it’s just how it turns on that part of the wall/ceiling. It just rounds the turn and ends that way on sort of a taper. Here’s an old shot that shows the turn to hopefully give it some context.

      xo
      s

    • Allen says

      Ah, I think I see now. The lighting in the first pic makes it look like the hand rail ends on another piece of trim.

      Thanks for the response, I’ll sleep better tonight!

  9. Alicia says

    John painting on the stairs reminded me of this fun commercial from Home Depot for an awesome stair ladder: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWC0XW6rIW8&feature=player_embedded

    Which reminded me of my college BBF who sings the song in the commercial. (iTunes Micah Dahl Anderson Head in the Air) Which reminded me that that same BFF just won an Emmy for composing music for TV. Which reminded me that I haven’t bragged about him enough. :)

    But for reals – you need to check out the ladder.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      That’s so funny! Love the commercial and the bragging. Our ladder telescopes like that too, and we love it. I wouldn’t say John’s quite that happy when he’s up on it, but it’s close…

      xo
      s

  12. mp says

    To paraphrase Ouisa Boudreau from Steel Magnolias, staples are pigs from hell. My daughter and I plucked out plenty when we prepared the floor in our first house for laminate.

    Your paint jobs are so good!

    Reply

  14. Gabrielle says

    I love the look of the stairs! I did the same thing in our house (although our house is nearly 100 years old) and I am in the process of painting the risers and keeping the treads unstained fir. We choose to keep our stairs bare (I slipped on a carpet runner carrying our oldest when he was 4 days old and never again will have carpet on stairs). I get that stairs no matter what they are covered with can lead to a trip or fall. (Though our 11, 9 and 4 year old have never fallen down the bare stairs!) What sold me beyond the fall on the carpet was the dust we found under the carpet and padding was unbelievable (and gross) even though I vacuum twice a day. So for our family, no nailed down or stapled down carpets as wood floors are so easy to keep clean and see where the dust is. Did you find a lot of dust and debris on or under your carpet runner?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh yes, it was sort of sandy under there. I don’t think it was dust, since it felt less fine (exactly like beach sand) but we attributed it to those 30 year old foam pads starting to break down from the friction over the decades. With this one we’re using a flatweave cotton rug and a different type of mat underneath, so we hope we don’t have the same degrading issue – at least not for a decade or two!

      xo
      s

    • Avone says

      We pulled up carpet in a fixer-upper that we bought a few years ago. The house was only four years old, but had been poorly cared for. We had removed carpet before, but that place had more of that “sand” stuff than we had ever seen anywhere else, and it was only four years old. My suspicion is that the carpet works as a filter for the thicker dirt leaving only the fine sand-like powder underneath. I’m pretty sure that place had never been vacuumed.

  16. Amanda L. says

    One of my FAVORITE things that we’ve done to our 103 year old house is put a stair runner in. We were going for something that wouldn’t show wear very quickly, didn’t have a big thick border (to make the ‘turns’ on the staircase less noticeable) and a pattern that ‘fits’ in a century-old house. I think we nailed it!

    https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/601888_10200846971797402_253066102_n.jpg

    Can’t wait to see what yours looks like. And I love the look of the white risers!

    Reply

  17. Sara @ The Fat Hydrangea says

    We have had our wood stairs for 2-years, mostly without a problem, but still BE CAREFUL! Our little yorkie-poo was a pro and it all it took was one slip and he toppled down them last week and the poor guy was in so much pain (the problem with the wooden stairs is not only are they more slick, but it also makes for a harder fall!) He is totally fine now, but now I block off the stairs with a gate so he can’t go up or down until our new runner is installed. I definitely regret waiting so long even though it seemed like everything was fine :(

    Reply

  18. Moira says

    Ok, ok. I’ll finally stop lurking and post a comment.

    Softening the blow is a good idea! When I was 6 months old my mom was carrying me down the stairs at my Aunts house, slipped on the stairs and had to fall on her tailbone so that she could protect me. The next year was very uncomfortable from what I’m told. Good call with the extra slip protection!

    I also really like the continuation of the foyer color up the stairs! It doesn’t look too dark which is very nice! It just adds some depth and polish! Our staircase in our house was too dark to continue the light blue from the hallway upstairs so we had to paint it a shade lighter.

    Reply

  19. Amanda says

    I grew up in a house with carpeted stairs and fell more times than I can count (no serious injuries). I’m a klutz so never thought much about it. However, I just bought my first house, which also came with carpeted stairs. During the inspection, the inspector turned around and watched me walk down the stairs. I thought it was weird until he explained most people don’t place their foot fully on the tread and that causes falls. I guess I passed his test because I haven’t fallen once on my new stairs. Something you may want to show Clara if you notice her having any issues with the stairs – regardless of carpet/no-carpet!

    Reply

  20. Sarah says

    I saw the title of this post and immediately got excited! I’ve been waiting for you guys to start this project so you can teach me how!

    I’m a single girl who bought her first house a year ago and got a very large dog shortly after :) The whole house has original hardwoods and Della (my pooch) slips terribly on the stairs. I’m hoping you guys can work out he kinks for me so I can start installing my recently purchased Albert and Dash runner next weekend!

    Looking forward to more info next week!

    Reply

  21. Diane says

    I have a question on the painting. I was at Home Depot the other day for paint and thought I’d try painting the ceiling with a color. But the salesman said if you use regular paint on the ceiling it will drip. So I went back to white ceiling paint. When you paint your ceilings are you using tinted ceiling paint?? If not what is the drip situation??

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      We use regular wall paint and it all seems to be ok! I imagine if you load up a brush or roller with too much of it (or use super cheap/thin paint) you might have an issue, but if you just paint it like a wall you should be golden. Oh but be sure to use an eggshell or flat finish (shiny ceilings can emphasize imperfections). Good luck!

      xo
      s

    • Avone says

      In my experience, ceiling paint is a bit thicker, but I’ve used wall paint (definitely in flat finish) on the ceiling several times. No drips, but possibly some splattering if you let your roller get too dry. Good luck!

  22. Rebecca says

    Reminds me of our first house. We had open stairs so each stair has its own strip of carpet and was stapled a million times! We also paintted the walls along the stair case which involved a lot of acrobatics…(remember I said they were open stairs, so tricky on a steady ladder).

    Reply

  23. Stacy says

    I have been waiting for the stair runner posts since you first mentioned it! I bought a house about a year and a half ago, and the upstairs and stairs have carpeting over original hardwoods. I’ve removed the carpeting in one room, but I haven’t gotten the energy for the rest. However, I have been wanting to install a runner on the stairs. My dilemma is that the original hardwoods are oak and the newer floors in the lower level are more of a cherry color. I’m afraid that the oak stairs may look bad next to cherry floors. I plan to paint the risers white or light gray. Any suggestions on the transition between the two different types of wood?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I think if you paint the risers that would really help (so the wood doesn’t touch, ya know?). Hmm, then I think maybe just tying both colors into the room in other ways (art with both tones in it, a light that ties into the floor, a frame that ties into the step color) might make them feel nicely layered instead of mismatched. Hope it helps!

      xo
      s

  24. Momlady says

    Marpet Maples?!? Ahhahaha! Yes, they’re EVIL!!! Evil Marpet Maples!

    I love the shots of Burger supervising the project. He appears to have certain cat-like tendencies…not a bad thing…though I’m sure he would not appreciate the comparison…so please don’t mention that to him.

    Reply

  25. Tia says

    Burger is totally just trying to keep his tiny bottom on the carpet as long as possible. Our dog Ohia is the only one in the house who LOVES the carpeted stairs. He would be all up in our business too if (read: WHEN) we remove it. Lookin’ good over there you guys!

    Reply

  26. mary says

    I can’t wait to see it with the runner. Are you worried about needing to shampoo it constantly because the white in the rug might show dirt? I have some white striped bath rugs and they usually look dirty within days of washing.

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      I’m not going to lie… I’m crossing all appendages that this rug doesn’t look dirty. We have other light colored rugs (a white and soft sage flatweave cotton one was in our last house’s living room for years, right near the sliding door where Burger came in and out from doing his business) and it comforts me that it has held up nicely, along with some white and gray rugs we had in our kitchen (also flatweaves, etc). Since Dash & Albert showed this specific rug on a staircase, it makes me feel like they (and others) have used it there (we found a gorgeous picture of someone’s fancy house with the same one on the steps) so I hope it works! Lastly, cotton is pretty great to clean (we have almost all wool/cotton rugs, and love that natural fibers seem to release stains more easily that some synthetics). We also have a shoe-free house, so that might help as well. I could eat these words though, so I promise to keep you posted!

  27. Danielle says

    Looks great! I am impatiently waiting for the ok from my husband to rip the old yuck looking linoleum out of my laundry room! I have a hunch (based on the what I can see under our heating vents) that the original hardwood is under the plywood that the linoleum is glued to! Hoping that is the case and that the wood can be sanded and refinished. If not, we will be tiling.

    Reply

  28. Meghan says

    Burger reminded me of our dog – We discovered beautiful hardwood under nasty carpet in our livingroom, but our dog tends to slip on hardwood (when sitting, playing, etc.) and preferes the carpet. She pestered my husband during the whole removal then just sat on the remaining piece as if to protest!

    Reply

  29. Sassy says

    In the for what it’s worth column, we once wanted to hang several sculptured pieces of art over a stairwell under 17 foot tall ceilings. We procrastinated over a year. My husband was asking someone at Home Depot if there were special kinds of ladders for stairs and learned that there is special scaffolding for stairs and Home Depot rented it. You would not believe how quickly that art went up and how stupid we felt for letting it sit a year. Just a thought if you are ever hanging something that would be tough balancing on a ladder.

    Reply

  30. Alex says

    Have you guys changed your image hosting? I can no longer see the pictures at work. So sad my favorite break time reading is no more. :(

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh no! We have used the same host (amazon cloud) for the last few years. So sorry if they’re not showing up at work! Sometimes offices get hip to it and block them, and sometimes it’s weird virus-blocking software that takes them away, but then a few days later they pop back up, so I’m hoping that’s the case for you!

      xo
      s

  31. Traci says

    Wow! So many comments about stairs! Hopefully, I am not too late, but the white paint on the stairs may be later regretted. I did a similar redo and painted the treads and risers white and added a nice, grippy runner in beige/brown tones. It looked great, but it is really hard to keep the white parts nice and clean. Even the risers are starting to look dirty all of the time. I definitely regret the white paint and am currently trying to come up with a solution that will look good and not scream dirty all of the time. Incidentally, the runner itself looks great. I’m also trying to figure out how to paint around the runner neatly, because I certainly don’t want to do an uninstall/re-install just for a spot of paint. Oy! I really thought since no one would step on the white parts they would stay pretty clean, but somehow they just get filthy.

    p.s. as long as the runner has some texture/grippy-ness as you stated you should be fine with safety. Now tripping over animals who love to hang out on the stairs because they love the texture of the runner…

    Reply

  32. Nancy says

    Haven’t read all the comments but our experience wasn’t quite as good as yours. In our case the wood had faded on the sides so when we installed a new, more narrow, runner it was noticeable. Glad you don’t have that.

    Reply

  33. Jenelle says

    You are making your stairs look fantastic on the way up! You know what would be cool on the way down? An awesome chandelier and some art!

    Reply

  34. Anna says

    Looks great! Apologies if this has been asked before, but before you install the runner will you clean/polish the stair treads like you did your other wood floors before you moved in?

    Reply

  35. Becca says

    I feel your pain! We just had our stair runner replaced a few weeks ago and the carpeting folks said that it would save a lot of labor costs if we pulled out the staples. We thought it would be no big deal, and we started at about 9:00pm the night before they were supposed to come install it (thinking it would take a half hour between the two of us) Well, we didn’t finish until well after midnight – so I know all about the grumbling and bad language during that task! Glad it’s done now though. Can’t wait to see the finished product with your sweet new runner. :) You guys are awesome. I’m nuts for your blog!

    Reply

  36. Avone says

    In the blurry pic of John on the ladder, I totally thought it looked like you guys were painting beige. I literally gasped. My mind was all like, “on no! That’s going to meet up with gray at that corner?!” And, “What in the world?! Have they gone crazy?!” I thought you Petersiks had lost your minds. :)

    Reply

  37. Nancy says

    One house ago, I peeled away the nasty carpet from one corner of a bedroom to discover beautiful original pine flooring beneath. So I ripped out the carpet, pad and who knows how many 1000s of staples and carpet tack strips/nails from the two rooms that had them. Totally worth it, but yes – a mess!

    Last weekend I took wallpaper border out of three rooms plus wallpaper/border out of the kitchen, and took every nail, molly bolt and screw out of the walls of an entire 3/1.5 house after the previous owners had lived there for over 15 years. Let’s just say…lotsa hardware in the walls. I’d still rather have done that than remove Marpet Maples, tho. Only the bedrooms have carpet and it’s like new, so that is staying until it needs replacing with something not-carpet down the road.

    My husband put an ad on craigslist for a Nov. 15 move-in special…and I was like ‘WHAAA??? All the ceilings and walls still need painting…and and and and… .” So we’ll be back at it this weekend, double-speed!! And I am *almost* using the paint scheme that your reader (Mia?) hooked me up with awhile back which was Benjamin Moore Relaxed Khaki…except we use Olympia One, so went with their paint color Tabu…v.e.r.y. close. Figured that was safer than having them do a match to another brand, since we will need more paint down the road. ;-)

    Reply

  38. Noelle says

    Last time I removed carpet staples, I sat on a mover’s dolly and wheeled around the room taking them out with small pliers. It was actually very easy since I just rolled around the floor- no bending, pulling, knee pain. I’d do it again that way in a heartbeat. I actually found it to be a little therapeutic…

    Reply

  39. Niki says

    While my stair reno is not going as swiftly as yours (darn full time job getting in the way), I too, have undertaken the task of painting the rails and spindles. I lifted up the carpet and discovered – no wood! Boooo. So the carpet stays for now until we can devote time to installing new treads. So I’m taking it from country to chic by painting the spindles white and the rails black. Hubby wasn’t too sure at first but he’s loving it now. We’ve got quite the classy coastal style going on in our home now, in which we’ve lived all of 3 months. So I feel like I’m right there with you during renovations. This weekend – wood plank ceramic flooring goes down in the dining room.
    Niki

    Reply

  42. Victoria says

    Looks so good! What am improvement. My husband and I ripped all the carpeting up in the Florida home I inherited from my Mom – 3 bedrooms, dining room, living room, hall. So much wall to wall and so very many staples, nails, spiky things, and dust from the disintegrating carpet pad. In one bedroom there was horse hair pad under the carpeting (eeeeewwwww!). It was dirty and tedious and painful and made me wish I drank whiskey – a lot of whiskey.
    But under it all was the beautiful original 73 year old oak floor in almost perfect condition. All we did was treat it with Rejuvenate and the floors look amazing. They really are some of the most beautiful hardwood floors I’ve ever seen.
    So all and all it was worth the pain.
    I look forward to seeing the final results of your stair project – I know it will be gorgeous.

    Reply

  43. Angel says

    Funny story: In our old apartment we had berber-style carpet on the stairs, which was great for anti-slippage. We lived there two years and never slipped once, with the exception of the day I went into labor and my partner FELL DOWN THE STAIRS rushing out to the car with the hospital bag. It was like a sitcom. I thought I was going to have to call two ambulances.

    He ended up okay. So did I. So did baby, who is now almost 3. But let that be a lesson for John now that he is a two-story father to be, – keep the hospital bag downstairs lol.

    Reply

  44. Ashley says

    We just did this recently, although we also had tack strips to pull up, too since the stairs were completely carpeted, not just a runner. Fun stuff. It took us several weeks to finish because we got the main level–>bedrooms finished, but procrastinated on the bedrooms–>upper-unused-guest bedroom/storage room since we rarely go up there (we have a split level, so lots of short staircases. We’re also planning on painting the risers white, especially since our hardwood stairs weren’t in the greatest of condition, but we decided to put removable stair treads to help our older dog navigate the stairs (like these: http://bit.ly/HGTJVt). They’re latex on the back, cotton, and washable, which is great because I hate hate vacuuming stairs, and our dog is a Golden Retriever who sheds like crazy. They actually stay put fairly well and only have to be repositioned occasionally. We were so glad to finally be rid of our circa 1980-faded gray carpet. Looking forward to seeing your riser painting job.

    Reply

  45. Jen says

    Oddly enough we removed the carpet and pad from our 13 stairs yesterday! We just closed on the house a few weeks ago and are de-blue and pinking the house of all the terrible carpet choices!!! It is a TERRIBLE job but makes things look SOOOOO much nicer!

    Reply

  46. donna says

    I have almost finished painting my hallway. Except for about 1 foot I can’t reach with an extention pole. I live in a townhouse community and noone here owns a long ladder. No reason to.

    I am currently working up the courage to ask one of the neighbors a couple of blocks away if they might hav eone.

    They have a garage, surely they have a ladder? :)

    Reply

    • Nancy says

      garage = ladder. That made me laugh ’cause it made sense to me, too! Why not? I think for the most part people are happy to be helpful and you may make some new friends – I would definitely keep asking until you find a ladder to borrow!

      This also reminded me of a story…I was new to the south and a work neighbor at the office suite next to mine called me up and asked if we had a ladder she could borrow. I said I’d have to check in our supply closet. Called her back and said sure – come on over. Well, she was looking for a LIGHTER, not a LADDER. We had a good laugh. I also had some trouble with a client who called about their LIGHT bill and I thought they were looking for the power company. They were asking about the bill they were behind on – their LATE bill. sheesh. After over 16 years I now understand southern and can even speak it myself ;-)

  47. C Behrends says

    Ah, reminds me of when my husband and I replaced the flooring on our entire first floor as the last part of a kitchen remodel. The front half of the house had only the original, narrow-strip wood flooring, while the back half had 3 layers: wood flooring, linoleum, and vinyl flooring. In all, we estimated we removed about 5K or fasteners (nails, staples and a few 10d screws – go figure!) And the splinters! Splinters where one should *never* get splinters! Worth it, though- the new floor is beautiful.

    Reply

  48. AnnM says

    Ohhhh my gosh, how my knuckles hurt reading about your project as it brings me back to my own (7 layers of paint off the stair rungs, posts and bannisters, removal of runner and staples, stripping of poly and stain, sanding to bare wood, resealing, staining and poly-ing and painting risers and rungs)
    I will never, ever forget the pain and torture of the staples! So often, I’d grip’em with my plyers only to have my hand fly into the bannister with such force once the staple decided to dislodge. Other times, I was left with one leg of the staple lodged in the wood (like a headless nail) with barely anything to grip! Shiver-me-timbers it was a nightmare and I so appreciate what you’ve gotten done so far! In fact, I’ve still not figured out the runner and look forward to being inspired by yours! :)

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