Dude, removing wall to wall carpeting (and all the layers under it) is no joke. We learned that when we finally tackled that task this weekend – and lived to tell the tale. Let me just tell you, progress smells a lot better than old carpeting. Even when there’s a substantial amount of sweat involved…
When we bought this house we knew that the four bedrooms upstairs (along with the hallway) needed new flooring since the once-cream (now mostly tan) wall to wall carpets were stained, threadbare, and even holey in some areas.
Thankfully a few areas were so loose we could peek under them during our very first walk-through to see what we were working with. Sadly, there was no hardwood to be found under there, and we were greeted with subfloor. But we’re so glad we made that discovery before buying (we definitely factored that expense into our decision). And after we got over the sadness of not having old hardwoods under there to revive, we got excited about picking out new flooring.
We considered a whole range of things for a while (hardwoods, new wall to wall carpeting, bamboo, tile) and after a lot of thought ended right back at oak hardwoods, since it’s what we had in our first house as well as our current one (even in the bedrooms). We like that we can always toss down an area rug to cozy things up (and since those can change over time it feels a little more flexible than committing to a certain type/color of wall to wall carpet for a decade or two). Plus with a kid and a dog we have just found wood flooring to be easy to keep clean/wipe down/etc.
We also already have oak flooring on the stairs that lead to the second level as well as in the future office, dining room, and living room – so we thought finding some in the same finish and grain would be a nice seamless this-has-always-been-here choice. But before we could bring in some delicious new hardwoods to install ourselves (at least that’s the plan!) we were faced with stripping away all of the aforementioned nasty carpeting in all four bedrooms up there and the hallway… which turned out to be quite the job. Here’s how we got ‘er done.
First we used a mini crowbar to pry back the corner…
With some gentle force it popped right up and we could start to pull it out from that corner.
It definitely wasn’t delicate pulling, more like forceful yanking, but with John working on one corner and me in another we were able to free up enough of it to start rolling it towards the other side of the room (we paused to take this photo, but picture me standing next to John rolling along with him). It’s definitely one of those four-hands-are-better-than-two tasks if possible.
Oh and wear gloves! And long sleeves if you’re smart. We wised up after our forearms got raw from carrying rolls of carpeting down to the garage, where we’re storing it all until we can figure out what to do with it (it’s too gross to donate, so we might need to rent a Bagster or something to get rid of it). Update: thanks for all the info on recycling carpets, cutting them down for curbside pickup, and all the other cheaper/greener alternatives than just trashing them. You guys are geniuses!
Room by room we repeated that process (and down the hallway as well). Pry up the corner, yank yank yank, roll roll roll, and drag that baby down to the garage. In some areas there was so much carpeting that we cut it in half with a box cutter before carrying it down to lighten our load. Then we were left with this lovely blue carpet padding underneath. Which was stapled and nailed down in about a thousand places per room (sadly that’s not an exaggeration).
Just like the carpeting, it could be yanked up, but it left a ton of little staples and nails and tack strips all around the room once it was stripped from the space. These are tack strips. They run around the perimeter of a room and are thin little shim-like pieces of wood with nails poking up through them (they grab the carpet pad and carpet to hold it in place).
Sometimes you can shove a crowbar under them (this takes borderline brute strength, so your palm is red even with gloves on afterwards) and pop them up all as one piece. The hard thing is that if they’re old and brittle (check) sometimes they splinter as they go, which means instead of slamming a prybar against them to try to get each 2′ long strip up in about 30 seconds, if it splinters a ton it can take five minutes to dig out all of the nails and splintered wood that break apart but are still stuck in the floor. You can see me gracefully (and breathlessly) doing this in the video we made for you about five photos down.
I worked on all of the tack strips in the master bedroom while John did the hallway and the nursery and then I tackled the guest room while John worked on Clara’s room. It probably took us about an hour and a half to get that part done, so one person trying to do that all by themselves might be in it for 3+ hours (probably with some blisters even with gloves on).
Once the tack strips were all up we were faced with the harder part…
… these guys.
They were everywhere and the prybar was of no help since it couldn’t really get under them. At first the only way we could get them up was by hand with a needle nosed pliers. One by one. But after John did Clara’s closet that way and it took over an hour (for one closet!!!) we decided we needed to find an alternative. Thankfully a little googling turned up the idea of a nice heavy duty long-handled floor scraper (we got ours for $25 at Lowe’s) and that was a lot faster! It still took some serious strength, and we both had sore backs, but we were able to get all of the staples up in all four bedrooms and the hallway in about two hours (at the by-hand-with-a-pliers-rate we thought it might take us about two days). Warning: if you have hardwoods, you might not want to use a scraper since it could ding them up, but it’s great for subflooring.
The next day we returned to clean up, using a broom to make piles followed by the shop-vac to suck up all the staples and nails.
You can see in this video how each step of the process went (it shows how to get up those tack strips and staples a little better than still photos can):
Now we have smooth, bare subfloors that are ready for hardwood.
We never thought we’d be so glad to see pure unadulterated pressed wood in our lives!
And now our garage looks like this:
That, my friends, is what progress looks like. Turns out progress looks a lot like stinky rolled up carpeting.
But oh happy day, we’re moving in the right direction!
Any other carpet stripping going on? Are the staples your arch nemeses? Those little buggers were infuriating until we discovered The Amazing Wonder-Scraper! Seriously, my “what superhero power would you have?” answer would now be to have a paint roller on one arm and a floor scraper on another. Never know when you’ll need one…
More Flooring Projects
If you would like to read about other flooring projects we’ve done, please check out the posts below:
Hannah says
I just bought a home that had vinyl (ugh) and subfloor ontop of original wood floors. Any chance that’s the same for you?
YoungHouseLove says
We wish! Sadly there’s no hardwood under there for us.
xo
s
Ashley @ Josh & Ashley's World says
You can also use a shovel with a flat edge. Thats what I used in my home and it worked wonderful!
YoungHouseLove says
Never heard of that! Smart!
xo
s
Elizabeth T says
We recently pulled up carpet in two of our bedrooms. They both had hardwood underneath but we were devastated to not only find it full of nails and staples but the padding was GLUED down! GLUED!!!! It was horrible and the floors were beyond repair. What a sad day it was for us!
Cat D says
SUCH a perfect post for my life right now! Hubs & I are going to be doing the same thing in a few weeks so this was great. We’re going for luscious dark bamboo in our whole first floor… SO excited.
YoungHouseLove says
Good luck Cat!
xo
s
Lindsay says
Yay for you guys! We just did this exact thing this last weekend. Ripped up some nasty carpet and put in *cough* laminate *cough* looks-sort-of-like-the-real-thing hardwood flooring. We LOVE it and the prep was by far the hardest part. I was in charge of staples and I can’t wait to tell my husband I’m not abnormally slow at that like he believed! I guess it’s normal? Good work guys!
Jess S says
We did that in our house, and our trash provider took them away (over the course of 4 weeks). Their only stipulation was that it was cut down to a specific size. Maybe check to see if your trash provider offers the same type of solution?
Also after tearing out carpet, I don’t think I’ll ever want it again, it’s so gross how much stuff it traps! Team hardwood!
YoungHouseLove says
Smart tip Jess! Thanks!
xo
s
Stephanie says
Looks like you have a lot of fun (?) work ahead of you. :) Have you thought about painting before putting the floors down? That way you wouldn’t have to worry about getting your new shiny floors covered with paint…
YoungHouseLove says
We’re pretty well versed in painting walls with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)
xo
s
Miranda Bouck says
Thanks for this, guys! We have really bad carpet in the basement (and stairs going down) from the previous owners that we will be ripping up to replace. We are saving our pennies before we do this, though (only concrete beneath).
Did you guys rip up the carpet in the sun room too? I remember you saying that being the worst area of the house.
YoungHouseLove says
We still have to tackle that room, but since it’s sealed off from the rest of the house, and we want to get the new flooring in before we move in three weeks, the upstairs floor stuff moved to the top of the list :)
xo
s
Christy Z says
Yay! Glad you’ve rid yourself of the nasty carpet. Can’t wait to see the hardwood floors! What color will you stain them? Light? Dark? Somewhere in the middle? Different in each room?
YoungHouseLove says
We’re going to share a post full of all the flooring options we looked at and where we landed in a day or two for you guys :)
xo
s
Bethany says
Ugg, that brought back way to many nightmares of staple pulling at our house. I’m glad you didn’t have to deal with animal urine on the carpet, that magnifies the stink factor by 1000! Now I’m going to want to redo our whole house again using the fun tools you guys find!
Paula says
We had an entire house of carpet we tore up. An installer in our area suggested cutting it into 4 foot strips before rolling it so it was easier to carry, and that also made it more of a one man job. While my husband did that, I painted all our walls and ceilings while there was no floor down – man was that nice! No drop clothes or wiping up splatters – especially helpful for the ceiling!
Also, our area has a carpet recycling program, so we had to haul it there ourselves but felt it was worth it to keep it all out of the landfill – maybe your area has something similar? (We do live in Dalton, Georgia – carpet capital of the world, so maybe it is unique to us.)
YoungHouseLove says
Never knew that! Thanks for the tip Paula!
xo
s
Brie says
My husband and I were lucky to have our best friends help us tackle ripping out the wall to wall carpeting in the living room, stairway, hallway and three bedrooms of our house. What a pain! We were able to cut the carpet into 4 foot sections and put it out for the trash. You should check to see if your township has a similar policy!
YoungHouseLove says
Great tip Brie! Thanks so much!
xo
s
Kitty Schaub says
When we bought our house last summer, we ripped up the carpeting in our living room – what a pain! We were lucky enough to have finished wood floors underneath (who covers that up?!?), but I swear I’m still finding staples! We probably pulled up 500 staples in a 24×20 room! Madness!
Are you guys leaving the carpet on the stairs?
YoungHouseLove says
That’ll come out too (it’s really stained and gross) although we’re definitely open to adding gates and a runner for Clara-safety if we move in and wood stairs don’t work for us.
xo
s
Devon @ Green House, Good Life says
I love the look of an all-wood staircase, but the runner is a really good idea because wood stairs can be super slippery under socked feet. Especially tiny socked feet.
Renee says
Good start. I’m curious – if you’ve had the house since last fall, why haven’t some of these items been checked off the list already? You could have a series of posts ready for release. (Smart, if you already do). I know there was the booktour, but if this just took a weekend…
YoungHouseLove says
We actually like just sharing projects as we go (doing all those secret book projects and holding back on sharing them for a year was so hard!). When we bought this house life was packed (even weekends) – we had a book tour and the holidays and lots of current house projects to juggle. So we chose to wait to shift our focus to the new house until we tied up some things at our current house and got an alarm system at our new place (so we could announce the new house with peace of mind, since the second we mentioned it people looked up the address in the public record) I think it would have been too much for us to juggle two places and stay focused without feeling overwhelmed. We just really wanted to see the projects at our current house through before we mentally moved on to another house (I know, I’m so weird!). Now it feels great to switch into new house mode along with all of you guys instead of secretly doing things beforehand. It’s just how we prefer to blog :)
xo
s
Kitty says
That looks like hard, smelly work – bet you’re glad its done!
How do you think Burger is going to cope with adding stairs into his life?
I lived in a ground floor apartment with one of my cats before we moved to our current house and his response to stairs started with suspicion and ended in “these stairs are my new “watching people” place, wahey!” Nearly 2 years later and that’s basically where he’s still at ;-)
YoungHouseLove says
There are stairs at Grammy’s house and the beach house (where Burger spends a fair amount of time) and he seems to like them. Sometimes we even found him laying down on them in a sun spot! Haha!
xo
s
Patty says
Yay for prep for hardwoods! When we moved into our 1970’s 2300 sq ft colonial it was completely carpeted. Our upstairs was like a kaleidoscope of colors. 5! Count em 5 colors of shag 70’s shag carpet. Burnt orange, olive green, pink red and orange together, turquoise, and a lovely lime green {{shiver}}. Downstairs was brown newer carpet in the dining and living rooms, indoor/outdoor in the KITCHEN, and a brown large plaid number in the family room.
Lurking under all that comical carpeting was BRAND NEW un touched solid oak hardwood floors!!! The previous owner hated hardwood floors (lucky for us!!). Our tack strip/nail/staple removing was painstakingly done by hand, but when we were finished, it was like we hit the jackpot!
I just love your new house, we have the same paneling in our kitchen and family room too! Good luck and much happiness in the house. Cant wait to see all the updates you’ll make.
YoungHouseLove says
That’s amazing!
xo
s
Val Jackson says
Why do people think carpet in the kitchen or, even worse, the bathroom is a good idea? So gross!
hjc says
Ha – I thought we had it bad with 1,200 sf of sculptured shag carpeting in yellow (living room), blue (bedrooms) and red (in the pink wall-tiled bathroom if you can believe it!), but your story takes the cake, Patty! We went immediately after our closing (4:00 on a Friday afternoon) and started ripping out that nasty stuff – ended up staying till late in the night. So many years ago, but I remember what hard, stinky work it was! Good job guys!
Margrét says
Super excited to follow the progress of the new house! I love this blog:) Best of luck to you from Iceland:)
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Margrét!
xo
s
Krissy says
Awesome progress! When we ripped up the carpeting in our place (which was also formerly cream but a funky greyish/tan mess when we got there), we found unfinished soft pine floors underneath. They would’ve been gorgeous, except there was a lot of damage over the years, due to them being unfinished. Sad times. We went with a pretty (and cost-effective) laminate.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man! What a discovery!
xo
s
Kelsey // It Takes Two says
Oh my, this is a familiar sight. My husband and I pulled up old carpet through our entire house about 2 hours after we closed on the house. I know the feeling of pulling up those staples all too well! We had hardwoods underneath the carpet which we were saving (they were in pretty darn good condition) so we couldn’t use a scraper…we had to pull each and every staple up by hand. Never want to do that again!
It’ll be so worth it though, your rooms are going to look great with new hardwoods!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s amazing! Must have felt so good when you were done!
xo
s
Mandy says
Wow! We were preserving the wood under ours as well, but I used a scraper just fine. There weren’t any noticeable scratches that I could see. I was definitely careful and for staples that just didn’t want to come up, I still used the plier method!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s awesome!
xo
s
Liana says
Ugh, I feel for you both! We only had carpet in our upstairs hallway (but not the bedrooms, oddly enough) and the stairs. We removed the carpet in the hallway, and even with two of us, it took such a long time! We’re planning to tackle the stairs soon, and then we’ll get the floors refinished. Thankfully it looks like the same hardwood used throughout the house, so we’re hoping for a decent match once it’s finished. If not, well, the house is almost 100 years old – I’m not looking for perfection, haha. I can’t wait to find out what type of flooring you choose for your house!
kathy from ct says
It’s just a disgusting job – but someone had to do it. Good job guys. We’ve done it in every home and it is well worth it.
We tossed it out the window when we could – ghetto, but it worked.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, that sounds fun. Didn’t even think of that!
xo
s
Ellen says
We tossed ours out the window too!
KarenH. says
I tossed mine out the window, too! It’s a handy removal method :)
Diane says
Oh boy. Memories. I pulled up 1900 square feet of gross old carpet, underlayment, tack strips, and a billion tacks in July 2005, while the rest of my family did other renovation chores in our newly purchased house. I wish I’d known about the tack removal tool… I used a screwdriver to pry up all the tacks. One clumsy fall into a pile of old tack strips, multiple punctures, one tetanus shot, and lots of sweat later, and we had virtually pristine red oak hardwood floors from underneath like magic. Well worth it all!
YoungHouseLove says
Sounds like a ton of work!
xo
s
Meagen says
“Nursery”!! Or future nursery?!
Seriously obsessed with the new house style you’ve bought. Living in a Craftsman style now, a beautiful brick front all-american home like this is our next dream goal!
YoungHouseLove says
Possible future nursery is it’s full name. Nursery is just shorter :)
xo
s
Renee says
Just call it a “spare bedroom” so you don’t get these veiled questions!
YoungHouseLove says
Didn’t even think of that!
xo
s
April says
We’ve removed carpeting a couple of times (in fact, a third round is looming on the horizon… *cries*). Not only is it dusty, smelly, and heavy, but your loathe towards those staples is rightly deserved. We were the suckers that spent HOURS pulling them up by hand. Pizza and beer helps.
Somer says
For the love of God, why is all the trim painted in various colors. That is what is stressing me out the most about this house. I’m going to have nightmares about blue trim.
YoungHouseLove says
Haha! They were really into painted trim! There’s cream, mauve, and about ten rooms of blue!
xo
s
Sara says
Way to go on doing the flooring yourselves! Can’t wait to see how it works out. Then I might be willing to do our living room floor in hardwood or laminate ourselves instead of hiring out. The blue trim and baseboards drive me wild. (A room in our house had navy blue trim when we moved in. It drove me batty and took a lot of coats of white paint to cover it up.)
Shelley says
I don’t think people really realize how gross carpet actually is until they rip it up. Luckily we have original 100 year old hardwoods in our home even in bedrooms. Its the best. Especially this past weekend when two of my kids had a stomach virus and threw up on the floor! Just got a mop and done!
YoungHouseLove says
Love that! Well, I don’t love vomit, but I love that it was easy to clean up. Hope the kids are feeling better!
xo
s
taetae says
So excited to see you guys tackling totally new projects in the new house! Are you planning to keep the oak natural colored or to stain it?
We stained our oak wood floors in our 1935 house a dark walnut color and couldn’t be more in love!
Congrats on getting started with new house projects!!! And yay for matching floors in this house :)
YoungHouseLove says
Sounds so pretty! We’ll share a rundown of all the stuff we’re considering when it comes to flooring options in a day or two! Writing it up for ya now :)
xo
s
Constance says
Whoa! I can’t get over how new/fresh the subflooring makes it look. It’s like there’s already an updated look. You can see the potential even more now.
Leslie says
I feel your pain! I’ve lived in two 1950s ranchers filled with wall-to-wall carpet and removed every inch of it. At least we’ve had oak hardwood underneath it all. I wish I had known about the floor scraper, because those are DAYS of my life I’ll never get back!
Jamie says
Do you guys plan on painting the rooms before the hardwoods go down?
YoungHouseLove says
We’re pretty well versed in painting walls with wood flooring on the ground already (that was pretty much the story of our first and current house) but we’d love to spray all that blue and mauve trim while the flooring is up, then lay the floors, and eventually paint the walls when we’re sure what colors we want to go with :)
xo
s
Margrét Sóllilja says
Super excited to follow the progress of the new house! I love this blog:) Just taking that horrible carpet away leaves a huge difference! Best of luck to you from Iceland:)
Ashley @ Spite or Flight says
1) I totally thought you said, “drag that BODY down to the garage,” and I laughed out loud. 2) Those staples are the WORST. My husband and I pulled up the wall-to-wall in our upstairs hallway and down the stairs a few years ago and it took us all day. I wish I had known about that floor scraper then!
YoungHouseLove says
Hahaha!
xo
s
Caren says
Staples are definitely my nemesis!
I pulled up old wall to wall carpet by myself last summer and had beautiful hardwood floors underneath. Prying up all of those tacks, staples, and nails was nerve-racking because I was so scared of damaging the floors. It took me a good 6+ hours to do the stairs, hallway, and bedrooms.
I still have not used a stapler in protest (go paperclips!)
My township has a bulk trash pick-up so I was able to have them pick up the old carpets for free just by calling them and scheduling a time for them to come take it away.
Noelle says
Oh I also wanted to share I sold my living room carpet for $25 on Craigslist, it wasn’t nasty though. The guy who bought it was going to use it for replacing carpet in his 5th wheel. Someone may still be interested in free carpet. Maybe they’d be willing to take it, use it, clean it, who knows. You still might be able to give it away, or at least some of it. Some people can salvage almost anything!
YoungHouseLove says
Great tip Noelle!
xo
s
Nicola says
I’m sure you already thought of this, but from my point of view it can’t be stressed enough:
Please make sure that all subflooring is screwed in tightly and doesn’t squeak before you install the new floor. The previous owners of our house installed brand new flooring over s super squeaky sub floor and now we can’t take a single step without waking up the whole house. It would be a shame to pull up the brand new floor, but if we win the lottery we will definitely go for it.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, GREAT TIP!
xo
s
Janelle @ Two Cups of Happy says
And John & Sherry said…. Let there be light! Already the rooms look so much brighter. Can’t wait to see your flooring pick. So many for options for finishes, woodgrain etc.
Emily says
Wow, that looks like a lot of work! My husband pulled up the old carpet in 2 rooms of our house a few years ago and got a nasty cough from the ick under the carpet. I’d recommend a mask after that experience!
Audrey says
“they grab the mattress pad and carpet to hold it in place” are you sure you meant ‘mattress’?
YoungHouseLove says
Carpet pad! All fixed :)
xo
s
Pia Bineau says
Hey guys!
Love the new home… we just bought our first one and we’re having so much fun making it our own. Isn’t it just astounding what an afternoon and a little elbow grease will get you??? Keep up the excellent and ever entertaining work :)
Much love,
Pia
xo
Heather says
Does your area have curbside pick up for larger items? We sat our old carpet by the curb and called to have it picked up (for free!).
However, not even 10 minutes after we sat it out there, some woman drove by, saw it and picked every single bit of carpet and old carpet pad up.
She actually unrolled it in our front yard, didn’t run screaming at it’s condition, rolled it back up and put it in her car.
I was pretty grossed out, to be honest.
YoungHouseLove says
Our current house doesn’t but I’ll have to see if our new neighborhood has it!
xo
s
Courtney says
Time to get out the paint!!! Painting all those baseboards before the wood means no taping!!!
Val Jackson says
I love the final picture of Clara skipping on the bare sub floors!My parents did a lot of renovating to our house when I was little, and I still have fond memories of blank slate rooms. Two thumbs up for going with oak hardwoods again. I heart wood floors.
I can’t offer any carpet tips, but I can suggest something to make your backs feel better. YogaGlo is a website I joined and you can watch videos that range from 5-90 minutes. The exercises will ease sore muscles after such backbreaking work.I like doing it after a day of gardening.Keep up the good work!
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Val!
xo
s
Cate says
It’s hard work! I pulled the bordello red carpet out of my older son’s room and the hallway while I was 8 months pregnant with my younger son. All that work on my hands and knees, pulling out 3,792 staples, ensured that the baby was positioned just right for an easy birth!
I second the suggestion of wearing a mask. The first time I pulled out carpet, I didn’t wear one, and found myself awfully out of breath. It wasn’t just the labor; it was inhaling all that dust, and who knows what else.
Your space looks so much lighter and brighter without the carpet.
Sarah says
I hope I’m not Debbie-Downer over here, but I did a similar thing in my house (ripped up carpet, hoping to slap down some hardwood ASAP) but found out that you can’t put real hardwood over particleboard underlayment – and it looks like that is what you have too. We are now faced with either using engineered floating “hardwood” or replacing all the particleboard with plywood before we can put down solid hardwood (a difference of a few thousand bucks for us, and having to wait to save up the cash)! I hope you’re in a better position than us, but I highly recommend talking to someone in person who knows their stuff so you don’t end up with squeaky or popping-up hardwood.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks for the tip Sarah! We’ll check that out for sure!
xo
s
Claudie says
We removed carpet from almost the entire house when we bought it and it was soooo gross. We had a concrete slab underneath though and getting the tack strips out from that was a nightmare. Luckily, we didn’t have a bunch of nails and staples from the carpet pad. We did have glue to deal with since it had been glued down. That involved a scraper and some sore backs as well. :)
We were so happy with just having a clean floor when it was all done that it took us a few days to even think about installing a new one, but we did and by ourselves too. It’s not that bad, really! Be prepared for more sore backs though!
I don’t know if your garbage company is the same, but ours will take (in a regular pickup) rolls of carpet as long as they aren’t more than 3 feet wide. Since you have it all out, you probably aren’t going to want to roll it out to cut it again, but some other people who are ripping out old carpet might want to check with their garbage company first so they can slice it into strips while they’re removing it. :)
YoungHouseLove says
Love the tip Claudie!
xo
s
Ashley says
I have always been a fan of y’alls, but now that we are redoing our new home (sound the alarms, while I do a happy dance!!!) I am loving checking in on the blog eveyday to see what tips can help and what stage y’all are in!! P.S…we ripped out the carpet last week and it was HORRIBLE!!! Can’t wait to see what is next!!
Claudia says
Wow! This makes a huge difference already.
Was the carpet not glued to the floor? Lucky you! Two years ago we removed the carpet from the living and dining room in my parents’ house and since it was fully glued to the concrete floor and was about 25 years old it “naturally” split into two layers. So not only did we have to roll the old carpet into heavy piles, we also had to scrape off the newly formed second layer. Let me tell you, the carpet people had done a very thorough job of not just securing the carpet in a few spots… nope fully glued down all the way.
YoungHouseLove says
Thankfully it wasn’t glued!
xo
s
Ashley says
I wish I had known that you could use a floor scraper on staples!
After pulling up 5 layers of flooring, my husband and I dealt with those dreaded staples in a small 10×10 kitchen reno. It literally took us days of hunching over to pull up over a thousand staples and nails. #calgontakemeaway
YoungHouseLove says
Haha! Not to laugh at your situation, but that hashtag got me.
xo
s
Sharon says
Shoot! I wish I had messaged you before about this. Having done this job myself, I found it much easier to toss the carpet rolls out the windows instead of navigating halls and stairs with them. Plus it’s fun!
YoungHouseLove says
Sounds like so much fun! Didn’t even think of that!
xo
s