Length times Width equals Area

Some of you may remember me debating the carpet vs hardwood issue in my home.  And I may have mentioned that I finally decided to go with carpet - again.  All things considered, I like the look of hardwood, but I do not like walking on it.  I am usually barefoot or in slippers and carpet is much more comfortable.  

So, finally last week they were supposed to install the carpet.  Here is a picture of my family room one week later:

If I take a picture next week, it will still look the same.  If it wasn't for the calming effect of yoga, I'd be a dangerous person.

Last Thursday they showed up to do the install.  My son and I had moved all the furniture out on Wednesday.  They came in and started ripping out the old carpet and I heard the installer call my name.  When I got to the family room, he asked if I had instructed the store to have the carpet installed in an East-West direction across the room.  

I informed him that I had told the store person that it was an impossible way to install it since the floor to ceiling fireplace area was in the middle of the floor and difficult to cut around if you laid the carpet that way.  He said I was right.  I asked him to install it in the other direction and he said that he didn't want a corner seam to be in a traffic area and that he needed more carpet to do it correctly.   

I then explained to him that the room had originally been measured incorrectly and fortunately I had actually gone into the store to review the drawing and pointed it out.  A few days later I had a conversation with the measuring company and explained the problem.  I had thought we were set, right up until I saw the odd way of installation.

So, now it is late in the day and we are having difficulty getting someone on the phone who can fix the problem.  After leaving a voice mail and getting no response, I called back and had the person paged.  The manager, the installer and I discussed the problem.  It was finally decided to have the measuring company recalc the amount in the other direction and re-order.  I was told the order would be placed on Friday of last week and that the carpet would take four or five days to reach the warehouse.

With more than a week having transpired, I left another voice mail this morning and went off to yoga class.  Good thing I did.  With my class finished I headed off to the store.  The person I had dealt with last week was not in.  I had someone wandering around trying to find someone who could handle a problem, versus causing a problem.  This manager reviewed the notes in 'my file' and said that they did not get a recalc until this past Wednesday.  How could it take six days to calc carpet for a room that is basically 20 x 20???

So, carpet just got ordered and is on a truck somewhere.  A truck that is scheduled to arrive at the installers next Monday.  Where they will inspect it.  And then call to set up installation.

And here is the real kicker.  The installer who was here told them exactly how much they needed to order.  He was right.  But seems the store couldn't take his word for it because he might have been wrong.  Just like the guy who measured and calced it the first time.

Lest I get too upset with these folks, here is another tidbit from my life last week.  I finally got around to finishing a book titled "Forgotten Landmarks of Detroit".  It is about buildings that have been torn down in the city.  I am reading about the Graystone Ballroom and the author says, "The ballroom was huge, with room for three thousand dancers -- four thousand...if they danced close.  Couples would...watch the action from a balcony that ringed the 124-square-foot dance floor."

WTF?  124 square feet?  My family room is 400 square feet and even with my 12 foot ceiling I don't think we could fit 3,000 people in it.  So, I went online to see if I could get any other information.  I ended up at the historical Detroit website and sent them an email suggesting that perhaps they had made a typo.  I got an email back from the book's author who said, yes, I was right and they had corrected it in a later edition and would also correct the website.  The number should be 1,240 square feet.  Geez, the man was trying my patience.  

I replied that that area allows about 1/3 of a square foot per person and I didn't think they were doing any dancing.  Or much of anything for that matter.  He replied that he had gotten his information from old newspaper write-ups and that he would remove any mention of the area from the website.  (don't believe everything you read in the newspapers)

Not one to give up easily, I did find a fire insurance company drawing of the building on the web.  Extrapolating from the four hundred foot frontage on Woodward and eyeballing the dance floor as about 1/3 of the building frontage, I am guessing that the square shaped dance floor was about 14,400 sq. ft. - or maybe it was 12,400 and the newspaper figured zeroes don't count.  The building opened in 1922 and yet I can find nothing online that mentions the correct size of the dance floor.

Well, it was good for a laugh and proves the point I tried to make with the salesperson when I was first choosing my carpet.  I told her that while I can tell you the dimensions of every room in my home, most folks wouldn't have a clue.