Aaand, back to the pantry floor.

Sometimes I just don't understand myself.  Ever feel that way?

Like, for instance, why I felt the sudden need to start ripping the carpet out of the pantry at 5:30 pm.  It's clearly not a project to start working on in the evening.  It's definitely a get-a-fresh-start-on-the-day kind of thing.

And yet.

Oh.  5:30 pm?

Must be time to start tearing out carpet.

I'll be honest though.

I think part of the reason is because Hailey recently tinkled in there.  She has an affinity for tinkling on carpet, as we frustratingly discovered at our last place.  She didn't grow up with carpet so maybe it reminds her of grass, I dunno, no idea.   Smooth concrete is also a tinkle trigger, likely a leftover from doggie day care.  This recent tinkle bout could be attributed to her girl parts infection but most likely it's because she was mad at me for leaving the house.  She does that.

As an aside, I am quite proud of my baby girl -- she went up the back stairs by herself today!  Yay!!

I think the other part of the reason is that, despite running around town doing errands and taking care of other stuff today, I sorta felt like I hadn't accomplished much of anything.

I know, it still doesn't make a lot of sense.

But the carpet is out now.

So is the carpet pad.

Well ok, minus the step.  The carpet is still on the step down.

As soon as I started pulling staples and it took me twenty minutes to clear just a corner, I realized the folly of my ways.   Except now, because I started too late in the day, staples remain, sticking up everywhere.

The corner that took a twenty minutes to clear of two different kinds of staples.

So babe, if you're reading this, wear shoes in the pantry!

But now it's for real.  It's on.  I have no choice but to figure out what to do with the floor now.

It's a bit intriguing, as you can see, since it appears to be part floor boards from an outdoor porch or landing and then filler pieces of crappy OSB.  There's a gaping hole by the vent so I tried to peer in, see what's going on under there but alas, my attempts were futile.  All I could see was inky darkness.

I could see into the gaping holes here below though.  Not much news:  stair stringer.  And spider web, yick.

It makes sense now why the flipper carpeted this room.  Because he didn't want the hassle of doing something decent or correctly or waste his time/money/effort in fixing things.  My love and respect for him continues to flourish.  Ahem.  Cough.

Even though the pantry is a disaster area now, I will say I am quite pleased that the carpet is gone.

Ok, game on!  What's it gonna be?  I don't know!  Stay tuned!