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November 27th, 2007

carpet, carpet, carpet, carpet, carpet

Five-eight-eight, two-three-hundred....
For those of you not from the Chicago area (unless the company in question has spread across the continent like a...uh..) that will mean nothing. For those of you who grew up with the Empire Carpet Man, you probably started humming the jingle as soon as you saw the heading. For the uninitiated, that's (cue music) "Five-eight-eight-two-three-hundred, EMPIRE!" in pleasingly unaggressive four part harmonies. One usually heard it after hearing a similarly pleasant and low-key sell by the nice Empire Carpet Man - who at this point must either be selling carpet to the seraphs and thrones, or begging remnants of demons, given that he was *mature* when I first saw him on tv in the 1980s.

Nice Carpet Man may have shuffled off this mortal coil, but the corporate carpeting behemoth of Empire still remains. And we just had one of their (pleasantly low-key) sales guys in here, to tell us the cost of completely replacing all our carpet, inclusive of labor and general furniture moving and taxes. It's under $2,700. Yeah, that carpet. The sewagey carpet.

*cue Dance of the Flooring Deprived, Now Made Whole by Generous Fortune*

We're not automatically accepting Empire's offer, mind. Since most or all of this is going to be paid for by the condo association, we're dong the responsible thing and trying to get a range of prices from reputable places like unto Empire. But given that the cost comes out to lower per square foot than a lot of the do it yourself, buy the carpet from Home Despot, places...I live in hope that we might have new carpet before the Yule. In a nice grey, rather than the purple we have now. Which, while conversation-worthy and certainly part of the place's raffish charm, can go naow plz.