A Surprise in the Vestibule

The other day I had our shop-vac out (P.S. shop-vacs are life-changing) and was cleaning up the common area in the main front door of the brownstone, which we share with our upstairs neighbors. There's this really nasty, unfortunate commercial grade carpet everywhere in there and it's dark blue-gray so it shows every spec of dust, every sliver of newspaper. I pretty much hate it.

Since my shopvac is so shockingly powerful, I kept accidentally sucking and pulling up the carpet piece on the vestibule floor. Suddenly I saw a flash of black and white tile under the carpet. 

I felt like Charlie when he saw the little twinkle of the golden ticket so he ripped away the chocolate bar wrapper as fast as possible. That old carpet was up quicker than you can say "carrara marble with soapstone."

After vacuuming and wiping up decades of dirt, I couldn't have been happier about my surprise discovery. It's definitely not perfect, condition-wise, but I love this 106 year-old original floor. Such character!

And isn't this simple pattern a great design? Gracie says "It looks like chocolate chip ice cream or a Queen's fur coat." Love that girl and the way she sees the world.