The wall-to-wall carpet craze

Back in the Seventies, the petro-chemical industry managed to convince a lot of people to staple or glue carpet over all of their lovely hardwood floors.  Mind you, before urethane varnishes, those floors had to be waxed, cleaned with solvent, and waxed again, then polished with these huge rotating floor polishers that every housewife was expected to own.  So, people substituted the wax and solvents (which at one point included the highly toxic carbon tetrachloride!) for hundreds of square feet of off-gassing plastic fibres, which added to their value by capturing and holding stains, dust mites, skin flakes, and other gross substances.  In one of the more moronic episodes, the Kingston General Hospital also opted for wall-to-wall carpeting in its wards, only recently being able to afford to remove the decades-old stuff now well contaminated with various vile human discharges and bacteria.  Of course, removing this stuff has created more non-biodegradable land-fill.

Below, a money-back guarantee certificate from one large outlet. Their "simple, easy-to-understand satisfaction policy" is anything but.

Below, what the customer had to do in preparation for the installers!