Once you get everything out of a room, you have to deal with the floors that are under the hoard.
If you haven’t seen your floors in awhile, you might be surprised at what’s been hiding under all that stuff.
Occasionally, it’s not all bad. If there was something big and heavy that was in the same place for a long time, your carpet might actually be nice and clean under there. Although it will most likely be a different color, like closer to the original color of the carpet, because it was protected.
Unfortunately, it’s usually not so great.
If something spilled and you didn’t know it, then you’ll probably find some amount of mold.
The kids spill soda sometimes and hide it instead of telling you. When soda has been buried under the hoard for years, it dries up and looks like someone used the carpet as their toilet and went #2. It’s disgusting. And it doesn’t come out.
Buried food can have bugs crawling around in it, even years later. You’ll find this especially under the beds.
Carpets with spilled paint on them are, of course, pretty hopeless. You’re never going to get that stuff out. So, either clean it up right away when it happens or plan on replacing your carpet.
Pet hair and dust can collect and build up in open areas if you don’t vacuum frequently enough. Try to do that at least once a week.
If you have hard floors, they can get scratched when things that haven’t moved in awhile are suddenly shifted around. It happens if things have gotten pushed up under them and you don’t know and then try to slide them.
It turns out that floors really are a big deal when you’re trying to sell your house. People aren’t very forgiving if you’ve neglected them.
Everyone will see everything that was under the hoard.
Thankfully, we had the most awesome realtor who knew the importance of floors.
He rented a carpet cleaner and spent hours trying to clean the carpets in the upstairs bedrooms that had all of the above problems. We were all thinking it would come clean because he assured us that he could do it.
He couldn’t.
Since we had already spent so much money fixing things and were quickly running out, we didn’t have the money to replace it. However, like I mentioned, our realtor was the best. He went on a search for carpet because there was a shortage due to the pandemic. Luckily, he found some and footed the bill for it.
Did I mention how awesome he was?
It was really great that he was able to help us with that because showing the house would’ve been even more embarrassing than it was if we had left the old, dirty carpets in those rooms.
After the wall situation in my bedroom, we needed something good to happen and the new carpet helped a lot. They even took the old carpet with them when they left. It made a huge difference!
Here’s the old carpet, after it was scrubbed for hours. It was still awful.
Here’s the new carpet. It looked so much better!
Fabulous!!