Flooring Fool

I did something stupid. I tried using bleach to remove dog urine stains from the carpet. The stains are still there, plus, the carpet now has orangish splotches all over it. I tried to fix that problem by spritzing bleach all over the entire carpet to make it even. Guess what, that made it even worse.

I considered all of the options and decided to remove all of the floor coverings downstairs and start over. About half of the floor is currently wall to wall carpeting and the other half is laminate Pergo crap. It's all going to be hard wood flooring, although I might keep the laminate in the kitchen. We'll see.

Shopping for the wood was not fun. The stuff I like best is expensive, plus it would have to be professionally installed. For one quarter of the price, I was able to get something acceptable that I can put in myself. I don't love it the way I do the good stuff, but we should be comfortable together.

The last time I put down a floor, I swore that I would never do that again, but I'm cheap and don't want to pay someone two thousand dollars to do what I can do in a couple of days. I'm not looking forward to those couple of days, though.

I am off to a good start. The piano needed to be moved. Normally, I pay piano movers to do that for me, but I had an idea. There is a sheet of Plexiglas leaning against the side of my house. I don't know why or where it came from; it's just one of those things. I slid it under the piano and was able to move the piano out of the way. That saved me a couple of hundred bucks.

I ended up buying the flooring at the Home Depot. Once the cart was loaded with several hundred pounds of wood, I couldn't push the cart. My shoes just slid across the floor like I was on ice and I couldn't get any traction to push. I hate to ask for help, but there was no choice.

I found a big employee to help me. As I started to help him him move the cart, he said, "Sweetheart, get out of the way. I'll push it for you." I don't like being addressed in a patronizing manner like that, but I said nothing and just let him push it by himself.

After a minute of watching him grunt, pant and sweat, I took an end of the cart and started helping again. This time he said nothing. Even with both of us pushing, it was a long hard trip to the check-out.

He offered to load my car for me, but this time he didn't argue when I said I would help. Working together, the loading went quickly. Afterwards, I thanked him profusely and he smiled and waved as I drove off. Why is it so hard for a man to let a woman help?