The Update...

Oh, just freaking sigh...

As you might have figured out by this point, no, the carpet removal and new flooring didn't take place -- again.  After packing up as much as possible (which honestly shouldn't have been necessary) and unplugging the computer system and moving it -- the team arrived, looked around and said, "There's a lot of furniture here, we can't do this."

Furniture in a home, what a concept.

I asked what they were referring to, wanting a more specific answer.  He said that because there was a lot of furniture, it would be too difficult to move things around to do the work.

While I certainly understood that having actual furniture in a home did make the job more difficult, this didn't strike me as the greatest response, especially since it had been made clear several times beforehand what was in the place.  The owner of the property had been inside and walked around.

"Look, if you can't do it, you can't do it," I said.  "But people have new carpeting and flooring put in their furnished homes all the time."

Well, yes, but this is on the second floor, they said, so it's more difficult.

Seriously, guys?  "Well, that's true," I replied, as politely and smilingly as I had in me.  "But people have carpeting put in second floor apartments, too.  And people has two-story homes."

The short version of the long story is that they're now going to come back on Monday, and bring a third person, and the job should go zippy then.  (Y'now, all they had to say at first is -- "Hmm, I think this would go better with a third person.  Is it okay if we come back on Monday?"  Sure, I'd have said.  Because that's precisely what I said here.

In the meantime, the kitchen is filled up with material and books and furniture that I moved there, so it's fairly unusable for the time being.  Some, too, with the bathroom, though I'd left a bit of a batch for some access.  (Hey, there are limits.)

The truth is that, while I know moving things into the kitchen and bathroom makes the work easier, I also know that it's completely unnecessary.  The independent living residence where my dad lives replaces a resident's carpet there every seven years.  The people are 80 years old, or 90, or there are even some over 100 -- I can assure you that 99-year-old Adeline who lives down the hall does not go around moving her furniture and empty her bookshelves when they replace her carpet.  My 93-year-old dad had his new carpet put in last year -- he left his computer system, bookshelves, filing cabinet, beds, sofas and everything exactly where they were and just went out for the day.

Will the job here be done much easier with things moved out of the way?  Absolutely, so I was okay doing it, even if inconvenient, along with unhooking and re-hooking the computer and all the cables repeatedly.  But -- boy, howdy, do I hope it actually, finally gets done on Monday...