Tread Rugs and Carpet Tape (It'll be the death of me yet!)

When Cali (our sweet golden/lab mix of 12 years) was geriatric, she had a very difficult time getting up and down the stairs with her arthritic hips.  The poor sweet girl, would grit her teeth and make the climb to sleep in our room every night.  Every morning, we would hear her try to slowly descend the stairs to go outside, but by the time she worked her way down the first 8 steps, she would give up and let the momentum overcome her, clearing the last 8 with a thud on the floor.  It was heart breaking.

{reNOUNed Nest}

Cali-girl enjoying, what would be, her last frolic in the snow.  She was such a good dog.  We miss her.

We didn't, at the time, have any carpet on the steps; a beautiful thing for us, but dangerous for our Cali-girl. Since I didn't want to cover the whole staircase with shag or oriental, I found these little, braided carpet rugs for the treads of the steps.  They were kinda an old look for my taste, but it was the best I could do on short notice for Cali.  I taped them down with carpet tape, and remember that I had to make a run back to the store for more tape.

{reNOUNed Nest}

Before I painted them, with words (see it HERE) and after the runner rugs went down.

I must have been in a hurry because the stuff I picked up was industrial strength (i.e. not removable, will ruin your wood, permanent, this stuff may last longer than cockroaches) carpet tape.  I slapped those babies down, and forgot about it.  We were happy, Cali was happy, not more morning thud, life was good.

Cali passed away that year.  The rugs stayed on the steps.  I guess I sorta forgot they were there or maybe I had other fish to fry and didn't take the time to pull them up?  Not sure.

  They've been on our stairs for nearly 5 years (that's a lot of laziness, friends!)!  A couple of weeks ago, I started pulling them off.  What a mess!  Unfortunately, I had forgotten about the industrial tape and started at the bottom of the stairs.  

Heavy traffic carpet tape sure does the job, but since it's indoor/outdoor tape, it sticks FOREVER!  Beware.  Good stuff, but, read the label and make sure it'll do (and won't do) what you want (and don't want).  If it has fiberglass in it, it may not come up when and how you want it to.

Lets just say, by the time I had worked and worked with Goof Off to try to get the fiberglass backed tape off of my once, beautiful steps; my fingers were sticking together, I was high on the fumes, my step was unusable and I felt like hitting the bottle (not naturally a drinker, so that'll tell you how bad it was)!  I put the carpet back down on top of the mess (believe me, it had no problem sticking!) and went to the top of the steps to see if the problematic tape was used throughout the steps.  I'm happy to report, the problem is only on the 3 bottom stairs but, unfortunately  it may take me years to get it rectified! 

Looks like it wouldn't be too tough, right?  WRONG!

Oh!  How I wish my picture could convey the difficulty of removing this adhesive!

And, yes, by-the-way, that IS dog fur you see.  It's everywhere!

Scrubbed and scrubbed.

(Why is the watermark in this picture so big??? lol!)

The easier stairs looked like this BEFORE I scrubbed.  Not bad!

AFTER, they looked like this.  Yeah!

The last three steps still have carpets on them.  Yes, I have been avoiding them for 2 weeks now.  It's just killing me that I can't seem to fix them yet!  {sigh}  My step-mom swears that vinegar cures {nearly}every cleaning woe!  I'm hitting it with that, today!  Wouldn't that be a kick in the pants, if simple vinegar took the adhesive off, and not all of these expensive cleaners?  I'm really hoping it works.  If not, I think I may have to call the professionals (both psychiatric and flooring)!

xoxoxo,

Cindy