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:
Taylor (Fresh Coat of Paint) says
Sherry, I feel your pain! We just broke our backs ripping several layers of floor from our main floor and some NASTY carpet from upstairs.
We cut the carpet anf put it on the curb but we had to haul that old flooring to the dump… some of it smelled like urine! That’s right… pee pee!!!
At the dump, they weighed it (the flooring, not the pee) and it weighed over a TONNE!
We saved the nails that we pulled out of the main floor for a pic: http://www.freshcoatofpaint.ca/2013/04/nailed-it.html but by the time we got to the upstairs, we were exhausted and just chucking those staples and tack strips.
I love watching you guys renovate. Thanks for keeping it light and fun and showing me that I’m not the only cray who signs up for this sort of diy mess!
Kari says
Happy Birthday to Clara (I think it is today?)! Can’t wait to hear about her party.
YoungHouseLove says
Yes, big day! Can’t believe my baby’s three!
xo
s
Kaara says
Ugh. I feel ya on the carpet! We have/had old carpet in our house that we moved into two years ago too and unluckily, yet luckily, had a flood and it all is being removed and getting replaced with flooring we love. Anyway, some of the nails were so hard to remove that my fiancé stopped using his pliers and bought a Bosch little round, flat hand saw thingy (sorry I don’t know the name), but I figure you may know what I’m talking about. It’s worked wonders! He got it up in our huge living room in a half hour!
Also… Donating ideas… Our neighbors ride quads and they want all our carpet to use for building their jumps… We obviously live in the country. Ha. So anyway, that’s an idea, it really packs the dirt down for people who enjoy riding quads and jumps or who have their own track! Just a thought for you all too!
Have a great day!
Kaara
YoungHouseLove says
That’s a fun idea!
xo
s
Melissa says
You just made a decision much earlier for me :) We are about to have our upstairs carpet replaced and we considered ripping the old stuff out ourselves to save $100 bucks… But your post just convinced me that will be a well-spent $100 to save our backs.. Especially since it would really be all my husband’s labor since I’m 28 weeks pregnant :). Oh and one question… Are you concerned about the noise level with putting a hard surface upstairs? Maybe it’s better insulated in a single family home but when I lived in a bottom level condo with neighbors who installed hardwood floors above me… We could hear every footstep (or stomp) they made! I’m sure you guys will have a smart solution :)
YoungHouseLove says
I think you get your money’s worth from good noise-dampening underlayment, so we’re going with the thickest, best stuff they carry since it’s the second floor! We’re also a shoe free house so that helps :)
xo
s
[email protected] says
Our carpet looks just as bad, but worse. We haven’t ripped ours out yet. I was hoping you guys would replace your carpet with some more carpet because I want to see if we can do it too. :) Maybe next time.
Becky says
Isn’t is such a great feeling to get rid of old nasty carpeting! We just installed/refinished our oak hardwood floors and used a unique single coat zero-VOC finish called Rubio Monocoat. Here’s a post I did about the refinishing process. I thought you two may be interested in trying something like this without VOCs if you go with unfinished oak flooring.
YoungHouseLove says
That sounds awesome!
xo
s
Lesley says
Oh My a Floor Scraper! how did I not know of such an invention when I had to pull up carpet years ago. You ain’t kidding about blisters!
Laura says
It looks better already. I did this on my first floor when I was eight months pregnant. Probably not the best idea but all is well that ends well. Someone else laid the wood down though. Do you have to do any special prep. on the subfloor to make sure it is smooth? I would love to do the upstairs if we could lay the floor ourselves.
YoungHouseLove says
It really depends what your subfloor is (particleboard, plywood, OSB, there are lots of different types) so I would find out what you have and then see how you have to prep it for hardwoods :)
xo
s
Laura says
Thanks. Now all I have to do is figure out what it is. Ha ha. Just looks like plywood flooring to me.
Marie says
Well that looks like a booger, but the end result was nice. We always cut our carpet in 4 foot strips so it can be easily carried out by one person. And our pad was put down with nice stinky glue that had to be forcefully scraped before laying down flooring. Looks great I can’t wait to see all the wonderful projrcts in the new house.
Rachel says
I have to admit that I am extremely jealous of you guys! I love that feeling of getting into you “new” house and tearing everything out of it. Hopefully to be doing that next year!
Good luck to you guys. It will be fun to follow you on your new journey!
Penny says
This one time in our previous house we ripped out old carpet only to find more old carpet underneath. I didn’t even know that was a thing.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man!
xo
s
Camilla @ Something Is Done says
Whoo boy! You guys have a lot of patience! This kind of tedious, labor-intensive job is one of the things I abhor about home remodeling…I would totally hire this out. Kudos to you two for doing it yourselves!
Courtney says
This looks amazing! I am embarrassed about the excitement I feel for your progress! Looks like a lot of work and it is inspiring! Question….does this house have smooth ceilings? Is this something you have mentioned and/or care about? If it does not have smooth and you are planning on the daunting task of scraping the ceilings, will you do that before you put the flooring down? Just curious! Thanks!
YoungHouseLove says
Yup, they’re smooth. Many homes here in RVA seem to have smooth ceilings!
xo
s
Dana says
Hi!! We just had all the ugly carpet removed in our new house. It was a gross yellow/brown color! Since we are under a pretty strict deadline before move in..we hired a contractor to do it.
By the way, our new house is very similar to your new house! It’s been fun and a little crazy to see the similarities!! :)
Joanna says
Your carpet post is bringing back staple removing nightmares! Our whole house had carpet (which we used as a giant drop cloth when removing drop ceilings and wallpaper) but we didn’t get to pull it up until the day before moving in! It took us months to pull out all the staples from the old hardwoods. There is a tool that is a staple remover that is better than needle nose pliers if you can’t use the floor scraper.
Sarah says
when we removed the carpet in our bonus room, I did the long and thin strips of it and then just threw away a little roll of it each week in our regular garbage. it took a month to get rid of it all, but it was free! I was also totally lazy and just hammered all the staples into the sub floor and put our click together laminate flooring over the top. No way I was pulling all those little buggers out! you are far more patient than I! :)
Danielle says
In march, I ripped out all of my horrible, “authentic” 1980s mauve carpeting & pad in my bedroom. We used heavy duty carpet scissors to cut the carpet into quadrants and rolled them up that way. I used needlenose pliers and a carpet staple remover to get the really long staples out of the hardwood. This week, I’m going to be removing the carpet from the stairs and entry (which all have hardwood as well). I’m glad someone out there understands my pain!
Sally says
Oh, I have SO been there. Nothing better that old dirty carpet, preferably one that has had cats peeing on it, and never vacuumed (we bought an old house for use as a rental, so had to redo all the rooms). And make it brown, just for fun. And shag. Endless work, esp. the staples. I used a screwdriver and a hammer to pry up each one, but then I only had a dining room, living room, and stairs to do. Still, I smelled like an old carpet when done. No fun at all…..
Tamisha says
I spent four days on hands, knees, and bum pulling out staples, tacks, tack strips from our old oak hardwoods. 2000 square feet of staples. And stairways. All by hand. I had a 5 gallen bucket full of staples and tacks by the time I was done. And a claw rather than a hand.
I feel your pain. But man, it starts to smell so much better when the carpet’s gone!
Tracey @ Talkative*TLC says
I am so excited to see how the floors turn out! My husband and I are closing on a house at the end of the month where the upstairs wasn’t finished and floors are our first priority. We’ve also decided to go with hardwood floors throughout all upstairs rooms and have been debating between oak or hickory. But leaning towards oak recently!
Kelly says
Yay! No more carpet!! It looks 10x better already! I just realized how much blue trim that house has…
MegW says
A milk crate and a bucket can be your best friend while pulling up tack strips. I always sit on the milk crate (saves your back and your quads) and fill to bucket with the pieces of tack strip.
Are all the foul smells gone from upstairs? If not, bust out a can of Kilz and paint those subfloors. Our reno house reeked of cat, and while ripping out the carpet helped, cat pee had also penetrated the sub floor. Once we rolled Kilz over the floor, the smell was completely gone. We did not want to risk dealing with animal smells once after we spent all that time laying new floor. It was really quick and for us, was totally worth it!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, thankfully the smell is gone! Whew!
xo
s
Amber says
Someone thought it would be a good idea to install basically the same carpet as yours in the dining room of our house. Really? Beige carpet in a dining room? Not cutting it with a 2-year-old. After two years in the house, that stuff looked tie dyed. We just had it ripped up and replaced with Stainmaster-treated hickory, and we love it. Much easier to clean up, and now our son has a place to drive his Hot Wheels. :)
Suzanne says
We did that a year ago when we bought our house as a short sale (aka the prior owners hadn’t paid their mortage for almost 2 years and didn’t give a care about cleaning). Imagine the scream face when it came time to clean. But those staples were by far the worst and most tedious task ever. When home depot called the day before to confirm the install they asked us the standard: did you take out the old carpet, tack strips, and staples? ME: Ummm staples too?? Doing that part ourselves saved us $$ so we did it all – except the staples. ARGH, we both got off work that day & stayed up til 2am the night before our carpet install plucking staples with needle nose pliers. Fingers blistered and bled and hallucinating (seriously when you do the same thing over and over again you go a bit cray) So. not. cute.
So what carpet did you decide on?! Come to find out we picked the same Martha Stewart carpet as the Bowers!
Stephanie DR says
Happy Birthday Clara!!!
Congrats on getting the stinky carpet out of the new house. Looking foward to watching you fully transform this into your dream home!
Lynn says
Hi Sherry,
I notice you frequently get a lot of the same questions after a post. Instead of answering them all individually, perhaps it would be more efficient to edit the post to answer. (Like for this post, tons of people are asking if you’re going to spray the trim before putting the new flooring down – you could add an “Edit: Lots of people are wondering if we’re going to spray the trim before we lay the new floors. We definitely hope to do that!”)
Something to consider! Hope that helps! :)
YoungHouseLove says
I definitely think about that! I just wonder if the people asking will read the post again (not likely, right?) so I’d have to answer their questions in comments and then change the post too. Might help with future comments but they all roll in so furiously that when we notice one popping up a lot there are usually 200+ comments sitting in moderation already (to be answered) so it might not help as much as we’d like :)
xo
s
tammylee says
My husband and I are flooring installers. I can’t really tell from the photos but it kind of looks like particle board sub-floor, if it is (not plywood) you should think about pulling that up before installing the hardwood; and re-installing either ply-wood or OSB. The particle board doesn’t hold nails or staples very well and also holds onto moisture. Just thought I would suggest that to you all. Also on your next adventure of removing tack strip…a roofing shovel is the bomb! :) happy renovating!!!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, we heard that! We’re exploring a few possibilities! Want this to last for the long haul!
xo
s
Mary says
Watching you guys pull up that carpet was like visiting an old nightmare – several years ago I took up the carpet in a little old house my mother was buying. The top layer was “plush” blue, next was the crumbly foam matt. Then came flat indoor/outdoor carpet GLUED, NAILED and STAPLED to the floor. I had to pull the staples up with pliers. Makes my stomach hurt just thinking about it. But after all that there was a beautiful oak floor underneath.
Mahareen says
I really can’t believe you guys removed all that carpet so quickly! Will you put the new flooring in before you move in?
YoungHouseLove says
That’s the goal! :)
-John
Ashley says
I just saw your book on the Antrho website, nestled between two whale bookends. I think that is very appropriate given Sherry’s love of ceramic animals. Very cool, congrats on everything!
YoungHouseLove says
Isn’t that crazy?!
xo
s
Kyla says
Wow, so much work but how satisfying to have such a clean slate to start from!
Last summer my husband and I installed 1000 sqft of engineered oak over our tiled basement floor (contractors were so afraid of that demo job that we couldn’t even get some of them to quote on removal of the tile), so we just floated the wood right over top.
I can say though, that the best thing we did when installing it was plan on 1 continuous install, so there are absolutely no transitions between the rooms and hallway. It takes a little more planning and careful consideration of how you progress past/into doorways and closets but it’s such a seamless look! Definitely worth the extra time and effort in the long run! And this was our first flooring attempt ever, so we’re pretty proud of how it turned out!
YoungHouseLove says
I love that!
xo
s
Sarah says
Happy 3rd Birthday, Clara! Hope it’s filled with fire-breathing goodness!! :)
Jennifer says
Been there, done that! Only our stairs, thank goodness. My husband pulled up the carpet and left me to do the rest. I couldn’t imagine doing the entire upstairs. You guys are hardcore! ;)
Sheri says
We are actually in the middle of doing the same thing. We got lucky though and have carpet good enough to donate – it’s pale white and pretty old but in good shape. Wouldn’t have lasted though with our 7 year old boy…LOL. Our realtor found out we were replacing the flooring and wanted it for some families that need new flooring and couldn’t afford it. Of course we were happy to donate it but it gets better because they are pulling up the carpet, tack strips, and any other staples in exchange for the carpet. We just have to move the furniture :)
djs says
on the topic of heated tile floors; we have them and love them. i really like to turn them on when I mop the floors-they dry immediately with no foot prints! the cat loves them too :)
Sarah says
Don’t you have the level the floor before hardwoods can go in? Also, why didn’t you want to look at vinyl plank floors? They are a lot cheaper!
YoungHouseLove says
They’re already level since there’s subflooring and everything (that was installed for the carpets, which had to be level as well). As for hardwoods, we just like them more than vinyl and love negotiating deals at flooring outlets, etc.
xo
s
Maggie says
So glad you all did the video. I’ll be doing this on my entire first floor, master bedroom, and upstairs all this summer and it is great to know about the floor scraper for all those staples!
Thanks!
Lesley says
Oy, what a thankless job? Well until you put the new floors in and fall in love.
We did the same to our second floor and stairs – it was shocking how many staples they use for carpet installation. Wish we had heard of the floor scraper 6 years ago.
I was a little sad to then see the guy installing our kitchen tiles using as many on the wire mesh used for the thinset. I just hope the next homeowners want to keep the tile and dont need to remove them.
Rosemary says
Happy 3rd Birthday Clara!!
Rebecca says
My dad has a powerful magnet he attached to a wooden dowel which he uses to pick up things the shop vac misses. It’s amazing the stray nails, staples, etc. that get left behind. It’s a great idea for after projects. He just waves it across the floor of his workshop and it’s like magic. Perfect since we used to walk around barefoot as kids (still do) and we had pets to consider.
Sandra says
If you know you’re doing hardwood (and not anything that needs to be glued to the subfloor) clean the subfloor and then seal it with kilz primer (or something lower VOC if that is a concern for you – safecoat makes something). It doesn’t look like that carpet was padded and if it was the source of stink, your subfloor is probably also grody. It would be a damn shame to put down all new hardwoods and have it still smell like whatever.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, the carpet was padded, and there’s no stink or bleed through to the subfloor- thank goodness!
xo
s
Lee Ann says
Props to you guys for tacking this yourselves! I pulled up carpet in a walk-in closet and had to use the needle-nose pliers to get the staples out. Hard, tedious work! Since it wasn’t a big job like your upstairs, it only took a few hours but I’m glad to learn about the floor scraper. :)
Can’t wait to see your next ‘step!’
Sarah says
Yick. I did this in our foreclosure last year the day we closed on it! We had hardwoods under the carpet (yay!) but no carpet pad! So it is incredibly stained from all the small animals they kept in the house. We’re having the hard woods refinished and hoping they can bring them back to life. We had staples on the floor, up the walls, in the window trim. These people were crazy. Lots of bonding with staples for sure.
Sherry from BC says
I have ripped up a lot of carpet in my time….horrible job but very satisfying. I was never able to use your wonder scraper because there was always hardwood underneath. The worst case was when I found the underlay had bonded to the floor underneath & I had to use a heat gun in combo with a scraper to get it off. There was mold there as well. Nasty job. It was one of the only times I actually cried about a reno. I was half way done and was sitting alone in the middle of the floor, my partner was out with our kids, keeping them amused. I looked at what I had done, then looked at what was left and balled my eyes out. Once that was over I wiped them away, had a coffee and went back to work. It was a couple of days of backbreaking work but it was worth it in the end….. You will have such lovely floors in a little while.
bekah says
Our house was wall to wall carpet. As in – bathrooms. Kitchens. CARPET. it was foul. I mean…really foul. I dont even know how to describe the smell when we pulled it up – other than that you could taste it. It was AWFUL.
And the staples. OH man. BUT ANYWAY – it was worth it! It always is!
Glad to see some progress for you guys!!
Hannah says
It looks GREAT!! I can’t wait to see what you’re going to put down now.
When we got this house, it was fillllleeeeddddddd with wall to wall brown shag carpet — on the stairs, in all of the closets, in every room but the bathroom and kitchen. It was gross. Underneath we had gorgeous oak floors that were original to the house, so I feel your pain about the staples :( Once we got the carpet and carpet padding up, my husband would do the tack board and I’d pull up the staples one by one so we didn’t ruin what we had just uncovered! We did it room by room over the course of the past year. Towards the end, we both got really good at doing it! And I sort of ended up enjoying it… haha. Don’t tell anyone!
Kaytie says
I can’t believe how excited I am for you ripping up the carpets. It changed the whole upstairs! I can’t wait to see how the rest of the house unfolds :) I’m glued to the computer screen!
Ann says
We ripped out our carpeting to refinished (outsourced) our hardwood–it was the worst process ever!! The layer underneath the carpet had been both stapled and GLUED to the floors underneath, so we had to scrape off almost every part of it, and it would flake and crumble while we worked on it.
Soooo good job! Really excited to see which floors you pick.
Ami says
*sings* “Ding Dong the Carpets DEAD!”
I’m SO so glad y’all got rid of the NASTY carpet before y’all moved in. I was looking at that and going “Omg that is SO not sanitary, please please please tell me they’re getting rid of that BEFORE they move in!!”
Kelly says
My only experience with staples has been with upholstery and I have to admit, I found removing the old staples to be weirdly satisfying. But getting them up off the floor looks like considerably less fun! Looking forward to seeing the hardwood you put down though.