Good-Bye, House, Part 2: Cutting A Rug

     Me on my first try at carpet-pulling.

       ... Continued from yesterday:
     If I ever hear a real-estate agent say, "You just need to pull up the carpeting" I do believe I will run many miles in the opposite direction.
    Just kidding.  Maybe.
    I expect the root of my problem with pulling up the carpeting in my in-laws' house was two-fold:
    1.  In my 64 years on the planet I'd never pulled up carpeting before, and
    2.  On my first try at it I had to pull up carpeting that was almost as old as I was, though the
   problem  wasn't so much with the carpet,

as with the mummified padding beneath.

     From decades of being trod upon I suppose, the padding was stuck to the floor and so had to be scraped up, but carefully so as not to damage the wood. 

Upon contact the padding broke up first into pieces and then into dust which had to be swept and re-swept.

   Our shoes and clothes were were coated with red dust,

...reminding me of the red volcanic dust that clung to our boots and the cuffs of our pants when Tom and I hiked the Waiamea Canyon last year (see posts from, 4/1- 4/10/2015)

...though leading me to conclude that it's more fun to be covered in red dust from hiking around Hawaii.

     Anyway, while Tom and I scraped and swept Tommy traversed the perimeter of the floor pulling out the nastily-spiked tack strips that held down the carpeting and  yanking out the zillions of randomly and wantonly-placed padding staples scattered around the floor area.  Tommy imagined that the contractor who put down the carpeting  60 years ago must have brought his kid along with him then gave the whiney, restless kid his staple gun to keep him occupied and said, "here, go around and staple down the padding for me."  And now we were paying the price for a kid gone nuts with his dad's staple gun. Or so we imagined.

    Still, we managed to get all the downstairs carpeting, living room and dining room, pulled up in about 4 1/2 hours.  (All right, I say "we" loosely, as , since the house had no WIFI, I took off after about 2 1/2 hours  - my bad - and headed for the local Panera to get my 2/4/2016  blog finished and sent out).   By then were way ready to eat again and, as Tom's brother Andy was on his way in from Rochester, New York and would be arriving in Richmond Heights in minutes, we arranged to meet him for dinner.
     We met up with Andy in the nearby town of Highland Heights at Crostatas Pizzeria, a popular family-owned Italian restaurant,

...where the food was phenomenal.  

Tom had the chicken cutlet, a pounded thin and herb ciabatta-breaded chicken breast that he proclaimed the best restaurant chicken he'd ever had.

Andy had the pork cutlet, which he likewise praised commensurately.

Tommy's huge home-made raviolis and meatballs were  sublimely tasty,

...as was my mushroom pizza.

    After dinner the guys returned to the house for a few finishing touches, a final sweep and staple-check, while I went out to the grocery store for some snacks and breakfast provisions.
    By the time I returned to the house it was late and our long day - which began for Tom, Tommy and me with our 3-hour trip from Columbus to visit Tom's Dad, followed by a 1-hour trip on to Richmond Heights, then hours of carpet-pulling - was done.  It had been a separate-but-equally long day for Andy, who'd driven 5 hours from Rochester and would start digging into the house work tomorrow.
     There'd be plenty more where this day's came from.