We LOVE our home, but it’s a rental, and with rentals come compromises. For example, white walls, and, often times, carpeting. I personally cannot stand carpet. I just KNOW dust bunnies are constantly having a keg party in a carpet. And while our entire upstairs is wall-to-wall berber carpet, I’ll give my awesome landlord credit where credit is due…it’s high quality. That being said, however, the berber carpeting extends into the upstairs bathroom.
As evidenced by this post, https://janellerene.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/bathroom-before-n-after/, when we first looked at this place, my immediate reaction to the upstairs bathroom was “Meh, I can live with this…” Several years, and a refinish of the built-ins later, I was able to “live with” the carpeting in the bathroom less and less.
Our landlord, undoubtedly slightly reluctantly, gave me permission to pull up the carpet. Actually, I’d already pulled up a corner, (praying the whole time there was some old terrazzo, or even laminate under that carpet), only to find your typical plywood subflooring under there. I came up with a pitch, approached my landlord in a detailed email, and waited. I knew he was going to be apprehensive, but my pitch explained that the floor would be properly water sealed, and thoroughly prepped so that he could do anything he wanted to the floor in the future, OR I would recarpet the area in the event we moved out. He contemplated it for seemingly months. When he finally gave me the ok, I didn’t have any time to actually execute my plan.
With the thanksgiving holiday, I finally had the gift of time to refinish the floor. My guy was like “how do you know how to do this?!” … I responded: “the interwebs of course.”
While there are a myriad of tutorials online, I’ll spare you the details. It took longer for the paint to dry than it did to actually complete this project. Subtracting out those wait times, I suspect it only took me about 4 hours of actual work time. It’s not perfect, but perfectly imperfect and we are quite pleased with the results!!
Carpeted Floor
Carpet Removed
Tack Strips Removed
Filled seams with wood filler and sanded
Primed – covering water stains and sealing the floor
Sand colored base coat applied
Stencil Bitches! The detailed stencil hides a multitude of sins (i.e., the imperfections that remain in the floor)
Back to Business (so to speak)
Confessions of a Former Pre-Teen Oyster Shucker 