Our stay in Canada as Workawayers counts today more than three weeks. We are now totally integrated with our hosting family, we share the chores without even asking each other and we are becoming fairly good gardeners – well, we try at least 😉
But today it is raining, no gardening at all, so what do we do? We give it a try as uphosteresr.
The living room carpet is old and need to be renewed? You don’t want to change it all? Attilio & Ambra Inc. are ready to help you. Just give us some new coloured carpets, felt pen, cutter, scissors and a stapler and here we are, you will not recognize your old room anymore.
We start it, first lines and first cuts
First thing first, we need to decide how the new carpet will look like. We try at least ten different shapes: touching carpets, separate carpets, strange and regular shapes, so, not an easy task. In the end, we finally are able to find the right design and the work can begins.
We cut the coloured carpets in the new shapes, we lay them on the white one in the choosen place and begin to draw the outline of the cut, quite as forensic scientists who draw the outline of a dead body with the chalk on the sidewalk.
We take the measure and draw, there is no way back from here on
Once we have draw it all, we can begin to cut the white carpet and do the holes to fit the new carpets. Now we fully realize how hard and long it will be what should have been just a two hours job,
Edward Scissoshands revenge!
Cutting all of it in the right size is quite an hard task, one has to take in account the space needed to fix both of the carpets and the underlayer. More, we have to think that the current underlayer is way thicker than the new one, and they will both stay, so our work is even harder.
First tries of matching of the two carpets, will it works?
With the utmost calm and precision, we cut the shape on the white carpet and on the thick underlayer of foam rubber too, quite hard to cut without tearing it off badly.
At this point, there is foam rubber and carpets pieces all over the room, we have already spend half a day cutting and matching and we still are not half of the task.
Italian flag on a canadian carpet, the black was exceeding so we just put it there!
Shortly before dinner, we figure out we are on a right way: everything is cut and well-refined, foam rubber included. The room is just a big huge chaos and it seems we will never come out of it with a good work. The dad, coming home after work day, has to jump two couches piled in front of the door to enter the home and he is just shockerd: he knew what we were up to, but he hadn’t forseen how it would have been, how much mess there would have been in here, and neither we had.
Half work done, now the hard half begins: matching and fixing all of it
We decide to stop here and begin again tomorrow morning, also successfully working the stapler in the meanwhile – with an external aid, actually – which didn’t wanted to be filled before: it was just the most dumb thing in the world, but we are excused since we were tired.
The day after, cheer up from a resting night, we begin with a blast: the two rolls of the new underlayer fit the whole surface and we begin to unrolle them.
We begin to rebuild: stapler ready, let the fun begins
We fix the whole underlayer with such care and attention and we better decide not to use any glue or sticky products that will surely result in big problems.
The partial result, after a bit of cleaning, is pretty nice. We begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the better part still has to come.
We can glimpse the final result, but we still have a long time to go
We begin with the biggest piece, hoping it is the right decision, and little by little we fix all the coloured shapes and make all the corners fit, filling the little holes with some spare pieces, trying to conceal them as much as possible.
The pattern begin to have a shape, pieces does match – almost all of them at least – and we go straight to the end
With the utmost patience and taking turns at the stapler, we can finish to fix all the coloured shapes, despite lots of interruptions: a little snack, the kids playing with us as their own personal playground, the dog trying to tear all the new pieces off and our sore fingers from both the scissor and the stapler.
It is a job that requires a lot of patience, some sort of giant puzzle in which each corner need to fit perfectly
No holes are permitted, also because we are pretty sure that four kids, a dog and two cats, will try all their best to take advantage of each mistake to tear apart all of our job.
We go on cutting thin strips of the with carpets apart, this is our last effort, and patch up the corners with the coloured cuttings.
We are almost at the end, our hands are almost working on their own now, just the last staples and we will be done
One staple here, one staple there, the last corner, the last strip…here we are! We are done with it, a last vacuuming will give it a nicer look to our masterpiece. The room is now so different, fresh and coloured, appropriate to the kids playing and we are happy as kids too.
We finally end this new game, our puzzle is finally complete. We have never been upholsterers before and neither we have ever think about being so, but here we are, canadian upholsterers!
The job is done and satisfaction smiles are pasted on our faces
At the beginning, we never thought we could have succeed in this new experience, the Workaway one, diving head-first in another family life, learning their habits and routines and get integrated with them, but we have done it. We are so happy about our choice and we are learning new stuff every day.
Now, when we are asked what job we do, we say fiercely Workawayers! 🙂
Amber
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