Home Improvementing: Carpet Removal

Carpet Removal

Let’s say you are replacing your carpet and would like to find a way to save some money on the installation. One way you can do that is to handle the removal of the old carpet yourself. It’s not complicated, but it is hard work. If you aren’t afraid of a little hard work, read on…

In my case, I was replacing the carpet with laminate flooring and the color of the baseboards did not match the color of the flooring. I decided to remove the baseboards, sand them, and paint them. After I did the first room, I decided that the best time to remove the baseboards was before removing the carpet. Removing the baseboards is another post, though.

Here I just want to talk about removing the carpet itself and cleaning up the crud underneath it.

Items you might need:

• ·         Carpet removal knife with replaceable blades
• ·         Work gloves
• ·         Safety glasses
• ·         Twine
•         Scissors
• ·         Extra garbage bags
• ·         Needle nose pliers
• ·         Pry bars
• ·         Hammer
• ·         Bucket
• ·         Vacuum cleaner
• ·         Broom and dust pan
• ·         Dust mask
• ·         Long sleeved shirt
• ·         Long pants
• ·         Sturdy closed-toed shoes

As always, read the instructions that come with your tools and ask questions of the folks at the hardware stores to make sure you understand your project. Use common sense and be safe when doing any home improvement projects. I am describing here what worked for me. You may decide other tools or methods may work better for you. More power to you.

After all of the furniture has been removed from the room, open your windows or at least give them a crack. You will be stirring up a lot of dust when you start ripping up the carpet and the open windows will help provide some air circulation.

Using your carpet knife, wearing your gloves, long sleeves, pants, sturdy shoes, dust mask and safety glasses, begin making cuts into the carpet about as wide as you want to handle when it is rolled up and tied. Bigger is not always better here. You need to be able to remove it from the house and get it to the curb or garbage container so be smart about how big of a roll you want to deal with. Consider also that the carpet is probably going to be pretty nasty once you get it up off the floor. Trust me. 

Roll up your strips of carpet and tie them up with twine. Check with your local garbage service, but mine would not take the carpet unless it was rolled and then tied.

You’ll want to do the same thing with the padding underneath. That rips a little easier so use the garbage bags for the random pieces that don’t get rolled up.

It gets pretty gross at this point.

It doesn't matter how often you vacuumed or if you just did it before taking up the carpet. You will be really grossed out by how much dirt is under that padding. For those of us with dust allergies, you will want to take frequent breaks and wear your dust mask during the carpet removal.

Sweep and vacuum as much of the crud up before you begin taking up the tack strips and staples. You’ll probably want to vacuum one more time after you've removed the tack strips and staples, but since you are going to be kneeling or sitting on the floor, you don’t want to be kneeling in that grossness.

Use your pry bar and hammer to pry the tack strips up from the flooring. It helps to aim the pry bar between the nails and don’t force it too much. Aim to loosen the entire strip by applying steady pressure with the pry bar along the length of the strip, and as you loosen it, more of the strip will come up without breaking into small bits. The more you do it, you will develop a feel for it. It's the same technique with the baseboards.

I like to use the WonderBar for the nails that remain stuck in the floor. It does a great job of getting those out without snapping off the head of the nail. Again, loosen the nail by applying steady pressure, but don’t force it or you run the risk of snapping the head of the nail off.

For the staples, take your time and go methodically around the room prying up the staples where the padding was stapled to the floor with needle-nosed pliers or other implements that seem to work for you. I even used a paint key that opens paint cans at one point. Use the bucket to collect them as you go. It will make clean up easier. Also, you want to collect them so you don’t accidentally step on one or lean on one with your hand. Not pleasant.

Take your time.

Allow plenty of time for the carpet removal and the removal of the tack strips and staples. Take plenty of breaks because the dust you stir up will be really disgusting. Removing the staples is tedious and getting all of that dust and dirt up off the floor is nasty, but the subfloor will be in much better shape for whatever floor treatment you decide to go with in the end. If you are paying someone else to install the new flooring, doing the removal of the old stuff yourself can save you hundreds on the installation costs.