Parquet revealed

Let's get down to business and discuss what we've done to the den.

This is the den on moving day:

Everything in the house was loaded into this room and the front room because of some tight scheduling, so that's why it looks like this. We've put everything away (or at least just somewhere else in the house). This room has already proven to be the one we use the most. It's so nice to have living space next to the kitchen, which was not the case in our rented duplex.

We arranged this temporary set up so we could enjoy some TV at the end of our days spent unpacking and cleaning:

Yes, those are flourscent lights surround the room. When I first saw them, I wanted to take them down immediately, but they've kind of grown on me. It would be tricky and spendy to put can lights in this ceiling, so for now I'm going to try my best to see if I can make them look a little more 2013 instead of 1969. Any ideas are welcome.

Last Thursday was the last day of the carpet in the den. I have a bit of carpet removal experience, but most of that all of that was in elementary school. We took up the carpet in our living room when I was in the 2nd grade and I decided to take a lot of pictures of our cats sitting on the rejected carpet pads. I was very proud of my skillz with a disposable camera . I'll have to see if I can find those photographic works of art next time I'm home.

Back to the present. The den right before the carpet came up:

And after the carpet and carpet pads had been dragged to the garage: 

DRUMROLL.........

 PARQUET

Now, on Thursday, I figured the hardest part would be getting the carpet up and moving it. That was surprisingly simple. The alarming reality was what we had to do once it was removed. The floor was covered in staples and all the edges had nail strips. 

Turns out my extensive carpet removal experience AND carpet photography skillz were useful 20 years later, as is evident by these high-quality images. I was weirdly good at getting the nail strips up. Within an hour or two of the two of us working on these, most of these guys were gone.

In case any of you are doing this anytime soon, I will share my method. I used one normal-sized flat-head screwdriver and one really large one. I would gently wiggle the the base of the strip with the smaller screwdriver and when I got some space, I would use the larger one to hold my place. Then I would slowly move down the nail strip. It works best to loosen all the nails on the strip before attempting to pull it up, or else it will split.

We also had to remove all the staples that had secured the carpet pad. That was a lot harder. I felt like there were about 12,000, but it was probably less than 100. Phil was WAY better and much faster at this than I was. Removing the staples took two days, but we finished on Friday. The floors without staples and another angle (and another shot of the lights):

 So my last step was to sweep, vacuum and then clean the floors with Murphy's Oil Soap. While vacuuming the floors, I decided to vacuum the stone fireplace, which was a good decision considering how many tiny mortar bits and cobwebs came off. The freshly vacuumed fireplace:

So now the floors are cleaned and I think every staple has been removed....I hope. The floors now:

I'm working on the walls this week.....more updates to come.