I’ve kept a little secret from all of you. Remember this photo of my puppy showing off the world’s ugliest carpet?

Yikes! Now for the after photo:

Tada! We got new carpet today. (Figured we better do it while we are still a 2 income household.) Isn’t it lovely? Nice normal berber. The room looks incredibly different – brighter, less psychedelic. It makes me happy just looking at it. And Steve stayed home while it was installed so I didn’t have to 1) take yet another day off of work or 2) have small anxiety attacks every time strangers moved pieces of our furniture which could be broken.

Steve and I had bets about what was under the carpet in the family. I was betting concrete floor, no padding. Steve wasn’t willing to bet against that. Turns out it was concrete floor with a layer of plywood for padding and then some sort of very thin padding which had disintegrated into dust at some point in the 30 years since it was installed. Seriously, they swept up the padding rather than rolling it. Lovely.

I had no idea what a pain in the ass it would be to get new carpet. We had to take everything except furniture out of the room. We had to empty the drawers and shelves of the furniture and remove everything from the walls. Now we have to put it all back. The rest of the house is a wreck because stuff is strewn everywhere. Plus they asked Steve to turn off the window a/c on the first floor. Apparently carpet stretches better when it is warm. Huh. Must have stretched beautifully because warm doesn’t even begin to cover it. I think I’ll just sit in my newly carpeted family room and enjoy the view for awhile. While I sweat. And wait for the a/c to cool it back down in here. Maybe fairies will come and restore order to my house.