After agonizing over the idea for over a year, and fretting and wondering if it could ever work out, I've set a major house plan in motion today: we've ordered replacement flooring for the house. We're taking the yuppie plunge, and shifting from carpeting to engineered flooring, because that's the best quality we can get, given that our house is on a slab foundation.

So ... yeah. That crazy idea is finally a thing, a real thing that we've now put real (ouch) money (ouch) down for. We caught the beginning-of-year sale that the local flooring shop has, and we're paying someone to do the furniture moving and installation, but this is finally happening.

I know it won't make the house hypo-allergenic, because it is well-established at this point that the little furry bastards are going to be, well, Little Furry Bastards, and when it comes to Edmund, the shed-o-meter does in fact go to 11. But ... it'll help. It has to. I've been increasingly angry over the state of the carpet in the years since the accident, and despairing of knowing that I had two solutions:

1. Clean All The Things, put all the things away, rent a steam cleaner, spend a ton of effort and need to redo it in a year's time
2. Clean All The Things, put all the things away, write a check, and theoretically be done with flooring issues for a lifetime.

I realize we're going to need a ton of felt pads and furniture-protector thingies (anyone have any brands they want to recommend or avoid?) but I am so very ready to be done with dealing with carpet. I realize we'll end up with a few rugs, here and there, but I am so looking forward to sending the vacuum off on a slow boat to Tahiti.

I hate vacuuming. Loathe it. Almost -- but not quite -- as much as I loathe cleaning the bathtub drain, which has to be one of the worst homeownership penances in the history of ever. I think I loathe it mostly because with two cats and an old carpet, it feels completely and utterly futile. By the time you've finished the house, it's already time to start again. Depressing, really.

I should buy a Roomba and saddle it for Tenzing.

The flooring company called back this afternoon and wanted to set a tentative schedule. I've got a moderate travel schedule until the end of February, but the real killer is that it's my turn in the on-call seat. I'll be primary on-call for a week, and then secondary on-call for another week, and during that time frame I don't want random workmen tromping through my house, moving things, tearing up my carpet, and terrorizing Fang. 

(Have I mentioned how we're looking forward to the humor of watching Fang cope with hardwood? In-house entertainment at its finest...)

So -- no installation while I'm traveling, and no installation during my on-call. They'll try to fit me in before then, but it looks increasingly likely that we'll be doing the installation around the first week of March. It's going to be an utter horror show while things are being torn up, but I keep reassuring myself that when it's done, it's going to be nothing short of amazing. The house will feel different, sound different, and clean up different.

As Jacob likes to remind me: progress. Slow and measured progress. If I have learned nothing else from these past two years I must remember those life lessons: if you cannot make major gains, make small daily changes and they will, over time, accumulate. While it's true that I've been thrashing toward this goal for many months, and I'm a bit disappointed that it won't happen in February, it will indeed happen in March.

* * * * *

Oh, right, details. Shaw's "Abilene" line, the "Ranch House Hickory" color. From flipping through different woods, I gravitated to hickory's color tones, and I wanted a mid-toned hickory with a lot of color and grain variation. Not polished and perfect; I erred toward slightly uneven hand-scraped finishes to hide some of the wear and tear these pieces will inevitably receive.

In the meantime, how does one saddle a roomba?