And God Saw The Hardwood Flooring, That It Was Good: And God Divided The Awful Maroon Carpet From The Hardwood Flooring, And Removed Those Horrible Tack Strips From The Floor, Which Cut Up Your Hands If You're Not Careful

Now that we had the keys to Kawama, two things happened: One, we understood the meaning of Kawama; and two, we set out to make Kawama a home.

The first thing we did was tear out the carpet in Kawama. Actually, the first thing we did was eat lunch on the carpet; we were happy to discover that the sandwiches from the closest all-night market tasted just as good as the sandwiches from the closest all-night market at our old place.

Every square foot of Kawama's floors were covered by something, whether it be carpet, carpet and paint or these self-adhesive vinyl tiles. The tiles and paint would have to wait, but we needed to get the carpet out before the movers arrived the next day.

We already noticed that it could be advantageous not to buy a house that had stayed in one family for many years. As a rental property, Kawama had to be pretty well maintained, or at least maintained enough to rent it out to someone. The electricity had to work, the plumbing had to accommodate flushing and showers and the roof couldn't leak. I mean, what else do you need?

On a related note, the guy taking care of the place that the owner believed the carpet and tiles served to protect the floors. In one's primary residence this would be silly — sort of the equivalent of plastic cushion covers — but we were quite pleased to have the floors protected for so long. (Then again, carpets are one thing and self-stick vinyl tiles are quite another.) If you pulled back the carpet, the floors seemed to be in very good shape, relatively speaking.

I'm not sure what kind of wood it is; a friend believes it might be chestnut, as there was a chestnut blight that hit trees in the region in the early part of the century leading up to 1930, when, as we know, every single house everywhere was built.

Sure enough, the floors looked good. Or at least good enough. After living in an apartment with industrial carpeting for nearly six years, the floors could have looked like the back of an IKEA bookshelf and we would have been happy. And after renting for so long, it felt great to tear up shit. I wasn't quite ready to break down walls, like those nice-looking folks do on those cable shows when they take sledgehammers to perfectly fine looking cabinets. And of course now that we owned the place, and were responsible for it, it was important to be judicious with our edits.

Fortunately, editing out carpet is not only uncontroversial but also rather easy to accomplish. It's only held down by a few staples and that nasty carpet tack strip stuff. We took one of the trash cans from the front and threw away what we could, rolled up the rest and put it out back until we could determine when the sanitation department came around.