New Carpet....what a hassle!!

First off, it was Ricardo's birthday on Wednesday. I'm not sure how old he is, but let's just say he thought the invention of dirt was a great idea. If you recall, several months ago I went to a flea market outside Soldier Field and bought someone a birthday gift. That someone was Ricardo!



Here's Ricardo with his framed, autographed pictures. If you look, you can see Roy Clark in the middle (from Hee Haw), Lou Ferigno as The Hulk, and the woman who played Marilyn Munster posing in front of the Munster Mobile.

And yes, they were all autographed to Rich! Turns out this guy at the flea market was selling his brothers pictures for him and his brother was named Rich. The idea hit me immediately: find the three craziest photos as a collective that he had, frame them and give them to Ricardo for his birthday. The Roy Clark photo is just disturbing.

Happy birthday Ricardo!!!




Two years ago my basement flooded for the third time and I had to throw out a large part of my carpet, not fully realizing what it meant. So here I am, two years later and I didn't have carpet downstairs until today.

Wow, what an ordeal getting carpet is! First, you have to move everything out of the room where they want to lay the carpet. They don't really have that cool magic carpet they show at the end of their commercials. That meant boxing up all the books and videos on my book shelves and gathering loose items. Then you have to move the electronics....ugh.

If you've been to my downstairs living area, you know that I have my tv, dvd, vcr, receiver, cd player, surround sound speakers and DirecTv box all hooked up. That's a lot of wires running around. My computer has just as many if not more with lights, a camera, also surround sound speakers, a printer/fax, external hard drive, keyboard, mouse and dsl box. Not to mention my phone! So there was a lot of coordination involved in taking everything apart and then putting it back together. It took me 10 minutes just to figure out how to turn the tv on again!!!

Now for the carpet pictures:



The green cement floor that was exposed while the carpet was torn up for the last two years. You can see it goes back to the back bedroom.
































The stairs leading downstairs needed new carpeting too. These pictures show the carpet stripped off. Unfortunately they didn't finish the stairs today, so I only have "before" pictures.








The old carpet where the television used to be. The cut in the carpet was from a repair to the cement I had to make.















And how it looks now.
















The new carpet!!



















The back room is even carpeted again!














The carpet looks whiter in the pictures than it really is. Onward and upward to the next project!