Great Raids in Carpet Removal

We are officially in our new house, and it feels worlds away from the old one. No longer can I call myself New Ro's own blogger, so I will have to content myself with a new title (to be determined at a future date).

The house we moved into, in Mamaroneck, had acres of the thickest, dustiest, driest shag carpet available to man or beast around the late 60s. The color in the living and dining room was a putrid and virulent green—a color I actually favor when it comes to little cocktail dresses, but not on the floor. In the family room/den, the carpet was rust-colored; coupled with the dark wood paneling and small then-in-vogue windows, the room seemed to suck up all available light and deliver a Stygian black gloom suitable only for decadent key parties. It also features a dry bar and a dropped acoustic tile ceiling. Yeah, baby!

We happen to have about seven of some of the best relatives and friends on the whole darned planet, because they arrived this weekend and tore that carpet up. Every last stitch of it, every tack board, every staple in the floor. From about 8 a.m. until cocktail hour arrived on Saturday, our friends sweated and pried, toted pounds of dusty carpet padding, and rendered the carpet fit for trash removal. One large chunk from the dining room was so hefty that we called it The Beast; it took five people to hoist it out to the garage. The stairs alone took two hours of prying due to all the tacks and nails.

While all this was going on we also managed to fix a broken section of fence, repair a broken toddler bed, sweep the area behind the garage for sharp glass, and tamp down the dumpster in the driveway (one demented soul jumped up and down on the carpets shrieking like an ape—not very wise considering the crevasses between the broken old cabinetry shifting beneath, but rather amusing all the same). Other crew members entertained the children by singing songs, molding Play-Doh into a lifelike plate of spaghetti and meatballs, and dragging around blocks of concrete attached to ropes. And everyone actually got fed.

By five p.m. all that carpet was gone, revealing pristine hardwood floors beneath. One team member swabbed the floors with Murphy's Oil Soap and we retired for cocktails and take-out food. As we sat on our new front porch, nary a shopping cart nor a speeding car came into view. And this was good.

What kinds of friends do this sort of thing? Some might say: The insane kind. I say: The rarest and best.