Hardwood floors on a whim!

I don't do much on a whim but yesterday when talking to my brother (who is in town for spring break) I found out he was itching to rip out the carpet. So today, after church, we went at the carpet with his tools and I'm so glad we did!

Step one: borrow all your brother and contractor's tools (knife with hook blade, crow bar, hammer). Here's Ez above after the first slice. He cut into the carpet first and peeled it back, then lightly scored the carpet pad so he wouldn't slice the hardwood. 

 Step two: thank jesus that your hardwood floors are in good shape because you sure as heck don't have the money to refinish them right now. This was our first look at the hardwood other than peeping under the edge at the doorway. When we saw this, my spirits lifted 200%.

 Step 3: roll up all the scraps and put them in contractor grade plastic bags on the street. And take a nice picture of your progress. Here is the living room with half of it done - we didn't have much of anywhere to put our furniture since the rest of the house is pretty packed so we took the move furniture as you go approach. The floors, as you can see, are in good condition. They need some Murphy's oil soap because there's odd places on there (if you look you can see what look like drip marks but they come off with scraping).

Here's a picture in action of the move furniture as you go approach. This is while we were doing the dining room. 

 By the time we got done it was dark so the picture isn't great but you can see what the floors look like. We swept and vaccuumed them and I'll clean them after the last step is done. Speaking of last step...

Step 4: go around the edges and take up these pesky strips of tacks with a small crowbar and hammer. They are everywhere. 

And really, the final step actually is replacing shoe-moulding around the room. Since the room had carpet, there is no shoe moulding and so the area between the floor and the wall is exposed, which creeps me out. We'll have to get shoe moulding that matches our oak trim, which could get interesting. 

So that is the story of how, on a whim, my brother, Jake, our friend Travis and I took out our carpet in the living room and den. It really wasn't difficult and actually was very gratifying. It took us about 3 hours. We'll see how long the tacks take but I am guessing that will be more time consuming.