So I've decided I'm tired of my basement.

For one, the carpet is disgusting. It's a dull brownish green that looks constantly dirty, even if it isn't, retains every unpleasant smell ever to waft across it, even if it's clean, and occasionally feels soggy for no real reason whatever. It's short like a gym floor. I detest it.

It was the first to go.

Today I decided enough was enough, donned a pair of goggles, gloves, and a face mask, and, brandishing a wicked curved carpet knife in one hand, set to work on the stairs. 

Now let's discuss the floors beneath for a brief moment. They're solid concrete, cold and gray and uniform. This carpet, this unholy abhorrant fabric, is stuck to the stairs not only with copious amounts of carpet glue that sticks and crackles and clings in that way that old glue clings once it has had years of feet fusing it to its host, but with staples. 

Staples. On CONCRETE. 

I have no idea how the previous owner of this house managed to find a device that can STAPLE CARPET TO CONCRETE, but this refuge must have become so elated with this deplorable carpet that he not only fasted it to the floor with enough glue to pacify the needs of an elementary school's arts and crafts for a year, but comissioned a stapler capable of firing copper staples through CONCRETE to ensure that the carpet would never be removed. These staples, these fucking staples, these wretched, ungodly staples spent most of the day rebelling against me for wrenching them from their concrete homes by catching on my right arm and raking it with a series of annoying red scratches and sinking themselves deep, deep into the flesh of my feet.

Those were far from the only surprises in store for me at this, my most determined hour. I was chugging along, as they say, ripping and slicing and yanking and coughing and sweating, until three stairs remained - one uniform, the final two twisting out into the main room. Strangely, the carpet had ended at the start of the third stair from the bottom, the last one heading straight down. So I sliced one of the corners up and yanked it up, and it popped up with surprising ease compared to the rest of the stairs. Unexpected. Far more unexpected, however, was the small colony of larvae that had made their home in my carpet. With a shriek of dismay I launched myself up the stairs, retrieving a bottle of bug spray, soaking the stair and slapping the carpet back down. After poisoning enough larvae to repopulate Pompei and dulling my knife on the stragglers, and with an awful, creeping, crawling feeling in the pit of my gut, I continued. 

Feeling within my own heart the hatred that the installer of this carpet must have felt towards humanity, I wrenched the carpet from the final two stairs - these two proved to be the most difficult and time-consuming. However, I was absolutely amazed to see that beneath the final two stairs is not  concrete, it is linoleum, stylish old linoleum that might have once been attractive if it was not covered in shitty old yellow glue. Disappointing.

That is the end of my anecdote. More updates as they come.