The grossest thing I've touched

Remember that thick, beige carpet covering all of the common space in my new house? The carpet we took immediately to calling the cat pee carpet?

Well.

As my closing date approached (though actually, thanks to all of the run-around from the bank that was selling the property, I never actually had a so-called closing date- it was more like wondering all the time if I might be notified that day that the sale was closing, and that funds needed to be wired immediately or I was in breach of contract) I plotted and planned the things I would do the moment this little house was legally mine. First on the list was removing that cat pee carpet.

I had already gotten a little peak at the very promising wood floors underneath said cat pee carpet. Oh, was it glorious.

One day at my lunch break, I even bought heavy duty rubber gloves and a respirator mask in anticipation. The house wasn't even actually mine at that point. But I was geared up.

So ready.

This was basically me:

via GIPHY

except, um, in a cuter outfit.

And then, when my house finally closed, my wonderfully practical and logical partner, Evan, talked me into leaving the cat pee carpet in place.  He had good reasons. But also, this meant putting off the grossest task I had been fantasizing about for a month.

His reasons? The cat pee carpet wasn't the only thing that needed work in the house- every wall had not been painted for 40 years and was caked with dust, dirt, greece, cat hair, and smoke. So we were going to have to scrub sand, prime and paint literally every surface. And a wall to wall carpet that is gross already makes a pretty damn convenient drop cloth.

And he was right. But, ugh.

So I sat on my hands.  (side bar, when I was a kiddo and a thumb sucker, I regularly resorted to physically sitting on my own hands to stop myself from sucking my thumb in public. the hand-sitting technique is legit.)

After a gruesome couple weeks of scrubbing, priming and painting (a lot of which was done by my amazing, industrious - and yes, recently retired- father, who came down to help with the house and can paint for days on end without complaining or getting sick of me) it was finally an appropriate time to pull up the drop cloth, er, cat pee carpet.

I titled this post "The Grossest Thing I've Ever Touched" and that is actually not true. I've stepped on a dead mouse once while barefoot. So.

But this carpet was pretty gross. There were multiple areas that were so saturated with cat urine that even 5 years after a cat had lived here (the house was vacant for 5 years, so unless there was a cat-squatter I believe this timeline to be true) there were still portions that were soggy to the touch.

The wood floors in the livingroom were amazing! Just gleaming and gorgeous. I mean, look:

This photo was taken right after removing the carpet, with floor staples still in place.

Here's a photo of the living room before, just to help demonstrate the full lovliness.

Oh yeah, getting rid of the dustiest curtains ever  and cleaning and priming the walls and ceiling also helped.

Unfortunately, the floor in the dining area didn't fare as well. It was clear from the beginning that the dining area would be in worse shape. We even called it the cat pee corner. The smell while standing in that space was...overwhelming. And unfortunately, so was the deep damage to the wood there.

Yes that grossness is pretty much just years old cat pee residue. It smelled pretty rough. This was the entire dining area, to show you the extent of the damage:

Doesn't look so bad, you say? Just be glad you don't have smell-o-vision.