Comedy of errors.....

Today started out well enough.  

We had to take Small Dog to the groomers, as, although she definitely rocks the Fu Manchu look, she was beginning to look more like an ancient dreadlocked hermit.

On our return, with SD neatly trimmed and smelling like a summer flower, we set about trying to fit the new carpet in the office.

It was never going to go smoothly.

First, we cleared a space in the sitting room in a manner not dissimilar to those games with a grid of little tiles that you move around inside a frame, trying to complete a picture.
Then we dragged the roll of carpet through and tried to lay it out flat.

Nope.

While we were working out our next move, we tried to lift the old carpet, which had welded itself to the floor, especially where both our office chairs had been rolling over it for the past however many years.  We finally had to resort to chipping it up with a knife. leaving piles of black/grey dust, where the gel backing had degraded and disintegrated.  

While we were both rolling up the old carpet on the floor, Small Dog got the devil in her (possibly as retribution for her grooming session this morning) and despite our cries of "NO... DON'T COME IN HERE"!!!! she blithely hopped over the carpet, dodged round both of us trying to catch her, then ran around in all the dust, before hot-pawing it out, straight into the sitting room where she jumped up on the sofa, complete with black-dusted paws.

As we could only cope with one crisis at a time, and were already on our knees and keen to avoid the 10 minutes of moaning and groaning that accompany standing up, we carried on rolling up the carpet, both of us starting to look like chimney sweeps, then taped it into a massive black refuse bag, acknowledging that it was too far gone to use as a template, even if we had the room to spread it out in the sitting room.  

Which we didn't.

So, after we'd vacuumed ourselves, the floors and the sofa, we decided there was nothing else to do but try to cut the carpet to size, in situ.

Obviously, we don't have proper carpet fitters tools, so we raided the tool cupboard and made do with a wallpaper scraper, a bit of wood and a hammer, as well as various other household utensils.

Three hours later, having broken a screwdriver, ruined a perfectly good pair of scissors and rendered the air bright blue, we finally finished, and I have to admit, it's not a bad job, despite all the drama.

It's only 4pm but we've thrown in the towel and poured two LARGE G+Ts, which aren't even touching the sides.  

Tomorrow....*sigh*....... relocating the desks and computers etc, and I'll be giving the bookshelves a (hopefully) final coat of paint.  It feels as through the house will never be tidy again, but I'm on the home straight and determined that by end of the weekend the ground floor will once again be habitable.

I know I've said this many times before.... but..... what could possibly go wrong?