My family has a love, hate relationship with carpet. My husband loves it, and I hate it.
In the first house we built, the building company put in what we found out to be the cheapest carpet they could find. It looked good for about the first week, then after walking on it, and our then-puppy marking his spot in more ways than one, it went to junk.
What once was a light tan colored rug turned into a gross brown color with matted spots and chunks missing. Even in the rooms that weren’t used very often, it didn’t hold up that great. We eventually pulled up all of the carpet on our main floor and laid laminate flooring, which was a little piece of heaven for me. Upstairs, we kept the carpet but invested in some large rugs to cover our icky carpet.
Once we moved, we had no carpet in our new house, not a shred. It was my dream house. The floors weren’t great, they were only finished around the edge of the room where the rugs didn’t cover.
We decided to refinish the floors and stain them a darker brown, which created problems. Although I definitely had feelings of hate toward my floors, they more than made up for it when the girls spilled juice or milk and all I had to do was wipe it up.
We still have our dog, and he now weighs more than 100 pounds and is great at shedding tons of thick, black hair. On my nice wood floors, it all just swept up nice and neat. Also, anytime it rained, I didn’t have to scrub out mud and wet dog from any carpet in the house.
Now at our new house we have carpet — lots and lots of carpet. It covers every square inch of our house, except the kitchen.
A change from our first house, it is nice, plush carpet. I can’t say I hate it under my feet and will probably appreciate it more in the winter. But when, on the first day we lived there, a juice glass was dropped and red liquid began soaking into the white — yes white carpet — I let out a big sigh.
My husband, on the other hand, couldn’t be happier. As I point out the rooms I would rip it out and put wood flooring, he bears down and defends the carpet and all of its flaws. I think it is one of his favorite things about the house.
All three bedrooms in our house have white carpet. I would not have picked the color and have tried to help defer some of the spills with carpets in each of the girls rooms, but already it is getting a little polka dotted.
The other rooms are a little better with tan speckled carpet that hides spills and dirt a little more, but I have invested in several carpet cleaners to keep it in the best shape possible.
Finally, our dog once again made the move with us and is loving the carpet. When we first put in wood flooring in our first house, he was not very pleased, sliding everywhere, unable to get a grip in the wood.
Now, he is completely in love with the soft carpet that serves as a bed anywhere he chooses to lay. Next to our bed is his preferred sleeping place, therefore I have noticed a large black spot starting to form in the white carpet.
Luckily, the vacuum I bought when we were first married still works and is sucking up all of the loose hair and everything else that is left in carpet. It might putter out on me sooner rather than later with all of the work it now has with daily, sometimes multiple times a day, cleaning our whole house.
Contact Jamee A. Pierson at
641-792-3121 ext. 6534 or
jpierson@newtondailynews.com