This project allowed us to do two rooms, the kitchen and the dining room. There was also a hallway and an entry. All surfaces were covered with carpet. The hallway and entry way gave us a particular challenge, since the two rooms were joined. The layout made the installation tough, as there was no single point of reference. You'll see how that made things interesting.

I had the pleasure of working with a friend of mine from Aylmer, Ontario, Canada, John Friesen. Yes, he's German, but he still did a pretty good job. ;)

The first thing that we had to do was tear up the old carpet. In this particular case the baseboard and casing was installed right down on the wood subfloor (which was tongue and groove planks). I have no idea why, because the planks were never finished. The trim was very nice and typical victorian, so why the floor was never finished, I have no idea, but the house was a hundred years old so no telling what had occured.

Carpet is held down with tack strip that is nailed to the floor around the perimeter of the room. You can usually pull it up fairly easy, as the picture here shows. Once you get a corner up, it's pretty easy. I also enlisted some help to roll the carpet up, that made it even easier. (OK, so they rolled the carpet and I took a picture!)

Now let's remove the tack strips and prep the floor!