Project: New Carpet

Greg and I have been talking about getting new carpet for years, literally years.  When we moved into our home, we didn't have a lot of money for upgrades, so we went with the carpet budget we had and promised ourselves we would replace the low quality carpet in five years.  Umm...that was 14 years ago.  There was always a reason not to - no money at the time, too overwhelming to pick out carpet or move all the furniture.  Finally, it was time.
We looked at lot of little, tiny carpet samples and made the best decision we could from a 2-inch square piece of carpet.  I thought that was going to be the hard part.  No!  It's like moving to put in new carpet!  Lucky for us we have incredible neighbors who help us move the upstairs into the garage and then move it back when we were done.  Really incredible neighbors!  Thank you so much!
Once everything was moved, we decided to rip up some carpet and paint the baseboards and door moldings in the hall and family room.  They were so beat up from 14 years of kids.  Greg wanted to spray them, so that required a lot of taping (the baseboards and door moldings are a different color than the walls).  It took us four hours to tape everything off and six minutes to spray them.  Yup.  They look really great though.

Time for carpet.  Our installer was great and he worked quickly.  I hadn't anticipated what problems we would have with Coal.  She really liked our installer and wanted to play, so we had to attach her leash to the kitchen table and keep her in the kitchen for two-and-a-half days.  It was torture for all of us.
We had carpet installed first in the baby's room and the family room.  We moved our bed into the baby's room and slept in there for two days.  Kate spent the night in the family room.  That was an adventure.  Obviously, she didn't sleep well, but during the day, Coal had no problem making herself comfortable in Kate's bed.  Kate usually didn't like it, but a few times I caught them playing and reading books together. And, I did wash all her bedding on the sanitize cycle after that.

 We all thought it was quite funny though when Kate stomped off to pout in her bed (which happens about 8 millions times a day) and she only had to go a few steps to sit disgruntled in her bed and stare at us with a crusty face while we all tried not the laugh at her.  It doesn't quite have the same impact.  Luckily that only lasted one day before we moved her back into her room.
It took me all afternoon to shop vac up all the carpet pieces left over from the installation.  Once that was done, it looked so nice!  And like I said before, we have terrific neighbors who helped up move everything back in and re-assemble the furniture that had to be taken apart.
After enjoying our new carpet for about one day, we (okay, mostly me) decided that it would be so nice to have freshly painted doors to go with our new door moldings and new carpet.  I truly have the most incredible husband in the world.  When I brought it up, he stared at me for a second, took a deep breath and agreed to do it.  When our neighbor saw Greg painting the doors in the driveway she looked at me and said, "You know you are spoiled, right?"  I know, Greg is so, so, so good to me!

And, once you have new carpet, doors, molding and baseboards, you need new heater vent covers and door knobs (we still had brass knobs).  What a guy!  Greg has been replacing door knobs a few a night for the last week.  I promised him that we would be done after that.  Everything looks so nice and we are so happy with how everything turned out.
Old carpet:

New Carpet: