Under the carpet

With Riley sick I look at the carpets in our upstairs with more urge to rip and tear out. Riley's room has carpet. He has already said he wants it gone. I go up to the game room and bring down my tools; exacto knife, pry bar, hammer, screw driver and pliers.

The first spot I check is the back of Riley's closet. Out of sight I can't do any serious damage, but I can see what is under the carpet. At first it looks like hard wood in a walnut finish. I get excited and go to his door where I cut a seam and lift. I pull up the pad and using the screw driver and pliers remove the staples that had been holding the pad in place. I wouldn't want Riley to step on an exposed staple. I pull the carpet back further. The floor under the carpet is not hard wood nor is it laminate. It is like some decorated plywood. There are seams between panels, wide seams. I fear if I rip up the carpet I will expose some funky unfinished floor treatment. I will have to have Tom look at it. I wonder though if I could grout the wide seams between the panels . Hmm, I will dwell on this new different flooring.

Maybe I will go back in his closet and get a better look at what is in there. Rip out a bigger area of carpet. Riley is in the big bed asleep. Both my boys like crawling into Tom's and my bed when they are sick. They revert back to young children again.

TV night has become an issue as we don't have good seating in the game room so our bedroom has turned into the TV room in the evening. Four adults is too much for our king size bed. One of the boys has to sit on the floor with blankets at the foot of the bed. If they sit at the end of the bed they can't keep their heads down low enough not to block the TV from the rest of us.

A few weeks ago the bed on Tom's side collapsed. The long board split where the metal hook is inserted that hooks the long side board to the back board, when Tom climbed into bed to watch TV. Tom stacked some books to the right height and shoved them under the board to support that corner. It is on the far side where no one will see. But Tom has banned Trevor from sitting on his side of the bed, Trevor being the heaviest and most likely culprit to the breakage.

We are going to love having the Game room finished. I am now stressing the delivery of the wood. Now that it is wet and rainy, I am told it is a curb side delivery. I am hopeful I can convince them to back it into the garage, but this is a tricky driveway. They may refuse. If I can just catch a window of dry weather, I can get the stuff moved into the garage myself. I have to carry it up to the game room. I received an e-mail from the store telling me to give the product three days to acclimate in the space before installing. We want to do everything right. We are not moving again. This being our permanent residence, these floors will be with us for many years. No botching the job.