Friday, January 15, 2010

Ramblings: Bacon-y fresh Carpet

I made the mistake of cooking BLT's for dinner last night and I'm still occasionally gagging on the aroma of stale bacon grease combined with new carpet fumes. Barf. That's the drawback that comes with the deliciousness of bacon, isn't it--that  you have to deal with the smell for about 3 days after.
I was googling for a picture of bacon to entertain you with and I found this.  I hope it's a joke. Although I admit that I'm intrigued--combining two of the most fabulous creations on earth...?!

We're almost all unpacked and rearranged. My frantic panic that the carpet wasn't the exact color I hoped for and too shaggy has diminished.  Once they got our old stuff out of here and the rooms were completely done, I relaxed. I think it is a major improvement. Our toesies definitely sense a major improvement. And the fact that the old owner's cat pee stain, the 5 foot area where I dropped an open container of Downy fabric softener that never quite came out all the way, the smashed Milk Dud stains, a variety of random kid pee stains, and other assorted disgustingness is now GONE makes all the craziness and hassle totally worth it. Now we can just focus on accumulating a fresh plethora of gross and unidentifiable stains.

It was going all fine and dandy till the kids all got home around 3 and because of the order of the rooms they were carpeting, we were all stuck in here. Yup. Crammed in with all the living room and office junk stacked in the kitchen. Alex left after about five minutes to go play at a friend's house--he said, "Ugh. I'm getting out of here." I was jealous. The boys and Maddie squished on the couch and watched a DVD on Jeremy's laptop for awhile.Then they just started whining and fighting. And more whining. Lots more fighting. Along with some name calling and generally unbecoming behavior.

It got even crazier that night while Jeremy and I were trying to reassemble all the kids beds and mattresses before bedtime while they ran around like crazy trying to dodge the areas where the poor guys were still carpeting.  Jeremy and Alex left at 6:30 to go to basketball practice, leaving me with the hyper little crazies and tantrum-throwing Maddie to get showered and ready for bed while simultaneously putting their rooms back together. Child abuse never made more sense at the end of that really long day.

The guys finally left at 7:30 cuz they said they didn't want to keep the kids up when they were trying to go to sleep. I'm pretty sure they just had headaches from all the screaming, crying, and yelling. Oh, and the kids were pretty loud, too.

(But for real--I didn't realize laying carpet is that loud. It is. They scrape all the old glue off the floor and then there's hammering, banging, vacuuming, and all sorts of other noises. And so much for all my deep cleaning in all the rooms before they came--it's also a dusty process. I had to redust and wipe down anything near where they were working. Keep that in mind and save yourself the extra work, future re-carpeters.)
All in all in took about a full day and a half of CHAOS and WORK but the house got carpeted and all the kids are still alive. Although Aidan did manage to step on a carpet tack that poked a hole in his foot--but he was afraid to cry or tell us for about 10 minutes because he was walking around in a NO- NO area when he did it.


The naked room with the nasty astroturf before they showed up the first day...and Jeremy on work calls all day while we were moving furniture back and forth.  I didn't do a close up because it was just way too nasty (the floor. Not Jeremy. Well, actually his shirt is a bit nasty. It says, "I Don't Give a..." and then it has a picture of a tiny mouse holding the rope to a donkey. I'll let you figure it out. But can you imagine the horror of the other parents when he accidentally wore it to coach basketball practice for a bunch of 9 year olds? Classy.) And yes, Tyson the Dyson is out because of course I vacuumed the carpet right before they could rip it out. What?! I'm not an animal.

The after carpet. Nice and fluffy with the superpower of camouflage. I really should've taken a before picture of the stairs. There was a really lovely juice stain trail up the entire set that kept reappearing no matter how many times I cleaned it.  And the day before it got ripped out, Alex and his friend tramped all the way up stairs with muddy shoes. And I didn't even clean it up. Even though I wanted to really, really bad. Look at my will power kicking in. Actually, I was just too exhausted. 

See--Look! It's so nice and fluffed that after I wheeled the vacuum to the closet it left a trail. Astroturf don't leave no trail. The kids were making snow angels in it before we moved the furniture back.  Do you like my broken LazyBoy? One day the boys and Maddie came up with a fun game. They would stand on the footrest and then Maddie would close it and they'd go flying off. Until it bent and bent badly when they tried it fully reclined. For the love...seriously.

But in true form, we've already put the rug to the test. Stainmaster, show us what you're made of.  This guy had a rough night--he awoke and came downstairs with a bloody nose.  And then a rough morning with toilet paper shoved up his nose and a death threat to stay on the tile OR ELSE when it started pouring again during breakfast. (Blood removal from carpet--successful. Thanks, Stainmaster.)

And on a totally unrelated note, Maddie's been complaining for weeks that she hates the shower in her bathroom because it "doesn't have enough water." We figured out that she meant the shower head was pretty pathetic and didn't have much pressure--and after checking it out, she was right.  So I hopped online and after reading a few reviews, I ordered what I thought was a decent one to replace it with.

Of course I assumed from the picture that it was about the average size that you typically see--like softball size.

Boy was I wrong. When it arrived today and I opened the box, I started laughing and all the kids gathered around to see what was so funny.

I'm pretty sure this is what the zookeepers use to hose off the elephants. Holy shower head, batman. It's bigger than an iron.  I'm sure she'll want the "total body spray" setting, because the "power spray" may knock her completely out of the shower. Or put an eye out.
Holy Moly that just gave me a BRILLIANT idea for a new time-out strategy--here's a hint. It involves Maddie's shower and the power spray setting.

Have a great weekend--or I'll come after you with the waterpik.

12 comments:

Unknown said...

I cook my bacon in the oven (toaster oven actually, but oven would work too).
It cuts down on the after smell tremendously!

Deanna said...

Lookin' good! You'll have to let me know when someone pees on in. I'm afraid to come over until then.

And your poor pitiful chair... :(

Andrea said...

The new carpet looks awesome!

As for the bacon... have you tried the Kirkland brand "pre-cooked" stuff from Costco? It's by the lunch meat, hot dogs, etc. That's all I use anymore. No more nasty bacon smell/mess!

Ciana said...

I love the Costco crumbled bacon stuff. You store it on your pantry shelf until you open it and then keep it in your fridge. It is so easy for salads and eggs that I never need to fry the other stuff and I just hope that I am getting a lot less bacon saturated fats too.
Congrats on the new carpet. I am glad that your kids are wasting anytime breaking it in for you.

Travis and Jamie said...

If you cook bacon in the over then it's less greasy (sp?) and it smells less. Love the carpet! It kinda looks like what we have in our house out here. But I do have one random dark stain in the middle of the living room that keeps reappearing. I don't think that ours is stainmastered. I'll have to keep that in mind when we move into our own house.

Unknown said...

Oooo it looks so nice and squishy soft...

Amy said...

Looks great.

I, too, cook my bacon in the oven. On a foil lined pan, no less. Throw away the foil and the mess is done. No smell and it still gets crispy.

We had our carpets deep cleaned yesterday so we're feeling a small tidbit of your excitement. It looks nice and fluffy in the mean time.

Deanna said...

Oh, and we cook our bacon in the oven too. So much easier to clean up.

Kimball and Marianne Larsen said...

Ditto on the oven baked bacon. That's our method as well and the smell is gone by bedtime (at latest)

The carpet looks great! I love fresh carpet on bare feet.

Jessica the Jacked LDS said...

bacon in oven is less mess, but also less yummy fattening grease. i love grease. i love how it pops on ur wrists when u cook it in the skillet...therefore, i will continue my bacon cooking on top.

oooh, that sounded scandalous.

love ur fluffy carpet.

ooooh, again...scandalous.

Lil Eskimo said...

first of all, i'm gonna need you to change your comment setting to a pop up window. i had lots to say, but the comment window replaced your post that i planned to refer back and forth to....okay, went to j lowe's site and jumped back to yours in a separate window. see all the time you'd save me? :)

bl's (hold the t) rock! love love love love them.

your carpet is loverly! looks fantastic!

waterpik discipline??? ask j lowe if it works...i remember this was part of her bag of tricks. ;)

and since i'm making blog requests. i'm going to also need you to let me "follow" you. this would ease my navigation to your blog.

okay, turns out that i didn't really have "that" many actual comments on your post, just a whole lotta demands.

enjoy the fresh squishy plushy camoflaugy carpet!!

Lil Eskimo said...

oh, yeah, remembered something else. reappearing stains. i had lots of those. had used our little home cleaner and still couldn't get them out. when our puppy girl barfed and poo poo'ed her guts all over our house in the fall, i had zero rez come out. they use only water, no chemicals. but they do some sort of ph thing with the water so it degreases and cleans. anyway. they got out my reappearing stains and months later they're still gone. of course, we have new ones to replace them.

you might try 'em 100 years from now when it loses its shiny luster.