Pink carpet no more!!!

My house is over one hundred years old and constantly has to be fixed or changed. Over the summer we got a new roof on it and painted it ourselves. This summer is all about the inside. I'm not saying my house is a complete wreck that is about to fall apart but my parents are complete opposites (my dad being a red neck and my mom a classy lady) who both want their stuff in the house. My parents have NO idea how to do décor and always come to me since I have a passion for interior designing and was considering that for a job forever ago. Recently my dad discovered a wooden television cabinet (everything is wooden in my house; perfect for a fire) and we went to go get it. Well when we got in our house we all agreed we liked it and my mom asked me what I now thought of our living room. Being completely honest I told her I hated the carpet (which had faded to a pink and matched nothing at all) and wanted it gone. Somehow I convinced my parents we should take it out and we so moved all our furniture to one side of the room to begin. Now pulling up the carpet is not had at all! The only problem is all the staples in the floor and spiky boarders. The first problem we had with them was my cats wanted to explore this new floor and I didn't want them to get hurt and my dad said he could careless about "The dumb cats" which caused me to start bawling my eyes out because my cats are my babies. Once my mom finally got my dad to get all the cats out of the room and apologize to me we had to get that stuff off the floor. It took us a good three hours to get all the staples out with pliers and the spikes with a crowbar and hammer in the living room. I think that was the hardest part not only because there were at least one hundred staples just in the living room but also because I had to bend down to get them and my back hurt so badly. The next day we moved onto the dining room which took only an hour or so. I did not do the stairs but my parents did and if I had to do them I'd think they were the worst. In the end we spent three days removing carpet and my spine had turned to mush. Even though I never want to do that again I would defiantly say that pulling out hundreds of staples with pliers one at a time was worth it because my house looks amazing. Now to paint...