Have you ever dealt with carpet glue?
Me either until just a few days ago. Now it’s my new arch enemy. I’m vowing here and now never, ever, ever to allow anyone ever, anywhere to use carpet glue in my house. It’s just the worst.
By now you probably know that I’m in the midst of my upstairs renovation. If you missed my intro post, read that here. Things are coming along. But I’ve really hit a road block. You guessed it: Carpet glue.
See, here’s the thing. Our house was built in 1911 and has beautiful hardwood floors. But over the century that has past between then and now those floors have been covered. The downstairs hardwood was unrepairable. {See the brown carpet here.} Pink asbestos backed linoleum stopped us from restoring it. {See the pink here…I’m not even making that up.} Instead we covered it with a fresh update. {See that here.}
The second story held more promise. When Emily and I ripped out the master bedroom carpet we uncovered that beautiful hardwood. The salmon pink {no joke} carpet was held down with a tacking strip around the edge…so it came up swimmingly. The hall was the same. But the office is a different story.
Here’s the office before we took anything out. Yes, very blue, I know. Very soon the wall dividing the office and master bedroom will be gone and I’ll have a bedroom that can actually fit all of my furniture inside.
After the furniture was out the trouble really started. It didn’t take a genius to realize that that carpet was secured by more than a tacking strip. Sure enough, once I started pulling it up I knew what I was dealing with.
The carpet came up. Leaving the carpet pad {which had been attached to the blue carpet} stuck to the floor. So I scraped and scraped and finally removed every last inch of the carpet pad.
By this time I could tell that that same, lovely hardwood was hiding underneath. So, riddle me this, my dear friends…why, oh why would someone slather glue all over original hardwood? I’ll chuck it up to be a mystery of the universe.
Anyway…now the adventure really began. I equipped myself with a big ol’ container of carpet adhesive remover and a stiff bristle broom. After several failed attempts to get the glue to budge using the suggested formula of a 1:1 glue: water ratio I just poured that stuff on full strength. Three hours later…the glue decided to let me scrap it up.
A big improvement, yes…but I was still left with loads of glue. So I repeated the process.
Now things looked better.
And finally…that brings us to the present. Two steps left. First I need to rub off all the left over glue. See the difference?
Then I need to wash the whole surface to get rid of any left over sticky.
I’ve done lots of projects. This is the worst. Tearing out the bathroom in Louisiana looks like a cake walk in comparison. I guess I should count myself lucky that it’s only a very small room and not my whole house that I’m trying to salvage. After all is said and done I only have one word: Yuck.
It’s parts of projects like this that really make me feel Derek’s absence. I love working on the house. Seriously, it’s my favorite thing to do. But it’s much more fun when you’ve got someone else knee deep in horse-hoof-carpet-glue with you. {Full disclosure, I have no idea if my carpet glue is made of horse hooves. Most likely not.} It’s a labor of love. For the house and Derek. I know when he comes home and has a lovely hardwood bedroom…it will all be worth it.
Now, back to work. As the photo shows, I’m only a third of the way finished with getting the final bits of glue up. Will I have arms tomorrow? That’s a good question. They way the feel now, I’m honestly thinking they’ll probably fall off before then.
Amy
