The Stench -or- Why We May Never EVER Have a Dog

Ryan woke up a few Saturdays ago and said, "We're ripping out the living room carpet today."  I thought we were going to do yard work.  But work is work.  And I wasn't getting out of it either way.  That's the problem with being the right-hand woman. 

Why, you might ask, did we decide to rip out 168 square feet of carpet on a random Saturday morning whim?  Well, it all had to do with what I called "Scratch n' Sniff" carpet.  When we moved into the house, we put couches in the living room.  No problem.  When I slid the couches into a more acceptable furniture arrangement about a week later, a horrible odor wafted up from the carpet.  It wasn't something we had ever smelled before--not when we were looking to buy the house, not when we had the carpets cleaned, not when we moved in and simply placed furniture in the room.  It was only after the carpet got a deep massage from a couple of couches that it gave up it's scent.  We discussed new carpet, but the carpet looked fine.  And there are 1000 other projects needing our money and attention.  And, after all, The Stench started to dissipate after a few days.  However, we started avoiding our living room at all costs.  We didn't want to accidentally release more of The Stench.

A few weeks later, Ryan commented that he hoped the couches weren't just absorbing horrible odor.  We're hoping to sell the couches (someday soon) and figured no one wanted to take The Stench home along with the couches.  So, once again, I moved the couches.  Slid them across the entry into the dining room.  The Scratch n' Sniff carpet once more did its thing.  And this time, The Stench didn't dissipate.  As embarrassed as we were to have people come to our home while The Stench was on the run, those who did come said they couldn't smell a thing.  And, even if they could, it was very faint.  We were convinced that they were just being polite.  And so, on that Saturday morning, Ryan decided enough was enough. 

When we walked into the living room, I said, "You know, on all those HGTV shows I watch, they always cut the carpet into strips and pull it out one strip at a time."  Nope.  The plan was to rip it out in ONE BIG PIECE.  So, I went along with it.  We tugged and rolled.  And I almost lost my breakfast.  If you think The Stench was bad after moving furniture across the top, just think how much worse it would be when you actually opened the source of The Stench.  On the far wall of the room, there was a HUGE stained area.  The carpet tacks along several feet of the wall were rusted.  Another small corner on the other side had the same issue.  I couldn't understand why we didn't smell this before and how the carpet looked so normal from the top.

It took us a good 10 or 15 minutes to lug, shimmy, and shove the carpet out the front door.  (We later learned it was 280 lbs. of carpet, although it seemed at least twice that as we manuvered the thing.)  Once it was on the lawn, we went back in and ripped up the pad, tack strips, and staples.  We didn't want to leave even ONE speck of something The Stench was clinging to.

The Stench was so bad that when we went back out to take care of the carpet, we noticed a random cat wandering over to our lawn.  It could smell the carpet all the way from who-knows-where and came to investigate.  We had talked about trying to cut up the carpet and put it into our trash bin.  But, everyone knows that 168 sq. ft. of carpet doesn't all fit into a trash bin.  That meant we would have had to store The Stench somewhere in the mean time.  And, I wasn't thrilled about attracting the rest of the animals in the neighborhood.  Instead, we cut the carpet into strips, (which is a story in itself), rolled it all up, and packed it into the back of our car.  (At this point, I told Ryan that next time we ripped out carpet, we were cutting it into strips BEFORE taking it out.  And he said, "Next time?")

We had some other errands to run, so we packed the kids into the car, rolled down all the windows and set out for the "transfer station"--which is just a nice way of saying The Dump.  It was at this point we started laughing.  Air whipping around our hair, kids complaining they were cold, and we couldn't roll up the windows because of The Stench.  But it was no longer in our house!

We're still working on fully eradicating The Stench.  It's greatly reduced now and the smell is generally contained to the living room.  We've put pet odor remover on the plywood floorboards, (the stain went all the way into the wood), and we're painting it with Kilz this weekend.  The good news is that while I'm in Utah, Ryan is going to paint the entire living room--as long as I can decide on a color by the time I leave.  A few weeks later, we will have carpet.  And, I'll bet we spend a lot more time in that room.