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:
Shannon says
Did the air quality in the house improve by a thousand percent? That’s what happened for me. I packed up my car with the necessary supplies for pulling up the carpet in my new house and drove there straight from the closing and started in on it. The entire downstairs was lumpy gold wall to wall and the upstairs was lumpy blue and brown wall to wall. The carpet pad had disintegrated and was stuck (rotted?) in spots to the hardwood parquet on the first floor, so it had to be vacuumed up in pieces, and in some spots scraped off the floor. Also, it was orange. I looked like I was covered in cheetos dust! Then the tack strips had to come up, then, because of the hardwoods, all the staples removed by hand. Hard, disgusting work, but thank goodness for the good friends who came over to help! But be prepared–nothing is as horrible as removing carpet from stairs. They use at least four thousand staples per step. People always say it’s amazing how much work I’ve done on my house, and I always tell them, “I was inspired to get it done by all the ugly!” Looks like you guys are in the same boat! :-)
YoungHouseLove says
Haha! The ugly is definitely inspiring!
xo
s
Jaimie says
Sherry,
I know you’ve painted the trim in both of your houses white, and that you plan to do so with new home. Was any of the trim previously stained? If so, how did you handle it? Do you need to sand it down or can you just paint right over?
YoungHouseLove says
You need a stainblocking oil-based primer and then you should hopefully be good to go with regular latex paint :)
xo
s
Becky says
I recently had a remodel done on my house – I contracted it out – and had my contractor pull up the carpeting. That is one job I never want to do.
Natasha says
Not sure if you’ve gotten suggestions on laying hardwood, but I’ve done floating hardwood over a cement subfloor and nailed hardwood over plywood subfloor. Definitely go with nailing over gluing or floating. The floating is much faster but it will squeak and just not feel very “attached” to the ground (duh, it’s floating, haha). I also decided to go with a thicker, eco-silent underlayment from lumber liquidators and it’s MUCH better than the cheap stuff I got at Lowe’s the first time around. Since you’ve already got the air compressor, just rent a pneumatic nailer and be prepared for your back to hurt for about a week.
Wendy says
We recently pulled up the carpet in our living room, dining room, and hallway to put down laminate. We had the exact same experience as you. To get up staples, I wedged a flat head screw driver underneath them and pulled them up. Worked easier for me than the plyers but was still a pain. Whoever put the carpet pad down in our house decided to glue it down so we had that to contend with as well. We’d get the glue up and find rusty staples under it. That was the worst. But it’s so nice when you get that new floor down it almost makes you forget all the trouble of getting the carpet up. Almost ;)
Nikki B says
Is Clara going to sleep in the nursery or will she sleep in her big girl bed when you move?
YoungHouseLove says
We had no idea she’d still be in a crib now but we’re just following her lead! Her new room will probably have the daybed and the crib in it so she can take her pick and hopefully transition easily whenever she’s ready :)
xo
s
Morgan says
Doesn’t big progress like this feel good? Be thankful that the pad was only stapled down. We had to removed glued down, ancient, crumbling, gummy, carpet pad under carpet at our house. It was brutal!
Erin @ His & Hers says
Ripping out the carpet was one of the first things we did on our house, too. :) I find it somewhat therapeutic, at let the initial yanking that pulls the top layers up. The staples….not so much. Looks so much better!
Megan says
Long story short my dog helped us “rip” up the carpet in our TV room… the only room on the main floor still with it and on our list to do. However, she showed us that the carpet is GLUED to the pad that is even more glued to our hardwood floors. So happy dance for the hardwoods, not happy dance for the glued pad that will take some serious sanding and stripping to remove. It’s major. And since it’s so major (and we’ve been tackling other rooms) it’s since stayed that way for way too long. But some day it’ll be fixed. But we have an almost 4 year old and a baby due on Halloween so it’ll be awhile.
Can’t wait to see what you guys go with for colors. Are you going to paint before the hardwoods so you can not have to worry about spilling?
YoungHouseLove says
We’d love to at least get to the trim while the carpets are up!
xo
s
Tracy says
Oh my goodness, I can’t wait to see your finished floors sometime soon!
We ripped up carpet in just our bedroom one weekend and it was a pain. in. the. butt. I can’t even imagine doing the entire second floor at once… You guys are awesome!
Jessica says
Great job! Inspires me to rip out all of our carpet! Hopefully sometime in the next year we will be able to afford to!
**Side note…did anyone else notice the subtle “nursery” mentioned above?? ” 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.” ;)
YoungHouseLove says
It’s just the shorthand for that room (our full name is “potential future nursery?!” but that doesn’t roll of the tongue as well). Haha!
xo
s
Corinne says
Please come help me with doing this in my house :) My house was built over 20 years ago, and I still have the original carpeting upstairs. It’s gross. It’s stinky. I purposely wear slippers ALL THE TIME when I go upstairs (which is every day, because that’s where my bedroom is). The previous owners let their dog go potty in the house, on the carpet, and weren’t very good about cleaning it up. Needless to say, potty training my dog was no easy feat when competing against another dog’s very obvious scent! I’m probably going to have laminate or hardwood floors put in eventually but was thinking of DIYing the carpet removal.
I’m just stuck on what to do for the stairs honestly. My stairs are open (not the easy regular kind where you just roll the carpet down and staple as you go), so it costs a lot more to have those done if I go with carpet. Recommendations anyone?
YoungHouseLove says
Anyone have recommendations for Corinne?
xo
s
Robin says
will you install the hardwood yourself?
YoungHouseLove says
That’s the plan!
xo
s
Lynn @ Our Useful Hands says
Aaaaand awaaaay we goooooooo!!!!! House #3 #cantstopwontstop
My best, Lynn
megan williamson says
Love the new house sooo excited to see what you do with it!! You are my part of my morning rutine now. Coffee, diapers for the kids, younghouselove and of course we have copied many of your projects! my husband and I are major DIYers and feel a kinship with you guys! haha when I told him you were moving he was sooo excited! He said ” I can’t wait to see what they do in their dining room! ours needs a facelift!!” haha DIY brains think alike!
Good luck!
Jen says
Not sure if this has already been mentioned, but you should look into carpet recycling options in your area. We ripped up carpet and installed bamboo floors last year, and we took all of our old carpet to a carpet recycling facility in south Seattle. They process the carpet and turn it into all sorts of consumer products, including carpet. The did charge a fee, but it was tax deductible.
YoungHouseLove says
Thanks Jen!
xo
s
Koliti says
Hey Sherry! How about for your next craft project you can bling out some safety glasses $herdog style! You’ve done a few projects lately where I’m saying to the computer, “Where are Sherry’s safety glasses?” – one wrong splinter, nail, staple and the party’s over. Please take care of your TWO beautiful eyes!
It warmed my heart to hear John in the video say, “I forgot my safety glasses, but I have my sunglasses.” Although while you’re at it, bling out a pair of J-Boom safety glasses too.
You could start your own line of blinged-out DIY accessories!
Laurissa says
I used pliers to individually pull each staple out too. I was whining that my hands had blisters when my man got home. He took the crow bar and aimed it flat to the floor and forcefully scrapped the floor. To my amazement, the staples went flying out! It was awesome! I finished the other half of the room in minutes not hours.
Jessica G says
yay! it must be so exciting! we did floors last summer/fall and i still haven’t blogged about it because it was our entire house and i went in to some kind of PTSD afterward. (kidding)
seriously though, the staples. i feel like we should’ve made it some kind of drinking game when we were doing it…and some of ours were in concrete because in Newport News we can’t have basements/crawl spaces, only concrete slabs. ri.dic.u.lous.
glad you didn’t find anything scary under the carpet…we found a razor blade. sketchy, much? haha congrats on your progress! :)
Jamei says
Is there a post of what the new house looks like?! I haven’t been keeping up like I used to with your blog and was unaware that you guys bought a new house! That’s awesome! I look forward to see all the improvements you do to this new house!
YoungHouseLove says
Here’s a full video tour for ya: https://www.younghouselove.com/2013/05/the-new-digs-2/
xo
s
Rachel says
We just bought our first home and had to rip out all the floors (carpet, hardwood, linoleum). It was HARD work. The great thing was being able to paint and work on the house before the new floors came in; made painting so much faster and easier.
LOVE your new place! Congrats!
JG says
Probably a dumb question – but is there anywhere you can see to under the subfloor? Just in case there *are* hardwoods floors under the subfloor? Sometimes they put down subfloor when they install carpet.
YoungHouseLove says
Alas, no hardwoods under it – we pried it back in a door jam, but no luck :(
xo
s
Carrie says
Congrats on getting such a big job done! Are you at all concerned that the wood floors on the second level will be really loud? Like will you hear more noise downstairs of people walking, toys being dropped, etc. upstairs? I have wanted to do wood but am scared it will be too loud in the bedrooms.
YoungHouseLove says
There are great underlayments you can use to dampen noise and absorb sound, and when they’re mixed with area rugs in a no-shoes household it’s usually not too bad (we both grew up in houses with two stories :)
xo
s
Robin says
I’m glad you’re thinking about this (not surprised though since you tend to think of most things!) since we live in an older RVA house turned up/down duplex. The hardwoods upstairs are extremly noisy! You can hear conversations, tv, things being dropped etc. Heeled shoes are the worst! They must have skimped on the dampening materials. :/
YoungHouseLove says
Oh man, that stinks! We definitely like to save money where we can, but keeping the upstairs quiet is important so we’ll definitely spend a little in that area so it’s a long-term solution that we don’t regret!
xo
s
Harlie says
We are about to close on our first house and ripping up carpet is definitely on the to-do list. We’ve never done anything like this before, so it’s great to have you guys as a reference and inspiration!
Krystle @ Color Transformed Family says
Hearing how gross carpet is when it is pulled up makes me not ever want carpet again. Our current house has carpet upstairs but if I had a choice I would choose hardwoods or at least some type of hard surface flooring.
I get so excited waiting to see the transformation of your new house. Even though like Sherry I get a little sad when I think about y’all selling your current house.
Karen says
Hardwood floors will be amazing in that house! I know I sound like a weirdo but I think the windows are so pretty. What kind of flooring is that at the bottom of the stairs? Linoleum or tiles?
YoungHouseLove says
It’s slate tile – and in pretty good condition, luckily!
-John
Cori says
Have you considered plywood? We are ripping plywood into 6 inch strips, laying them down then white washing them and topping it off with water based poly. I love it! You are right about the staples though… there are so many!
YoungHouseLove says
That’s fun! We have seen that done and it looks really cool! I think since there’s oak in other parts of the house, including the stairs that lead into the upstairs hallway, it’s a nice choice to keep things seamless :)
xo
s
Beth says
When we bought our house the previous owners had carpeted one room over the 100 year old hardwood floors. We decided to pull up the nasty, stained shag only to find that they glued down the carpet padding. The floors were sticky and have little black foam pieces spotting all over the room. We’ve managed to get rid of the stickiness and most of the foam after a ton of gentle scraping (don’t want to damage those diamonds in the ruff), but we probably still need to either buff or sand and refinish them.
Louisa says
Haha, I lifted all the 20 million staples when I was 8 months pregnant – picture me crawling round on my hands and knees with a giant belly! When the carpet men turned up they got all freaked out!! Nesting, what can I say!
SarahN says
This was one of my first DIYs in my new loft about 18 months ago – but it was WAY easier than you guys had it. I also put down more carpet so I didn’t struggle with the outer nail rails. Though the underlay was suspected to have asbestos (this was after I’d gung ho removed it!), in the end I was fine. Thankfully the carpet layers took away all the old stuff – win!
Shreya says
IN.Credible – That is an amazing amount of work!
I can’t wait to hear about how you went about the process of selecting flooring given that you now have a blank slate to work from for the upstairs.
Julie says
The floors look SO much better with the carpet out! I can’t wait to see what comes next.
Katie says
We did this about 3 years ago, but we did have hardwoods underneath. We used a $5 carpet tack puller from the hardware store. It made easy work of those tacks, just like using a staple puller. We also carried our carpets and padding to a recycling facility and made about 50 bucks. They paid us based on the weight of our load. I’m so anxious to see how you’re going to decorate the stair well. After 3 years, that’s the only untouched spot in our home.
Diane says
Please tell me you are going to hide those wires under new moulding!
Olivia says
Did you consider the noise factor of having wood upstairs? I can tell what room people are in upstairs cos every step can be heard downstairs. It’s a nightmare with kids, and you’ve got a dog as well. For that reason alone, I’d go with carpet.
YoungHouseLove says
There are great underlayments you can use to dampen noise and absorb sound, and when they’re mixed with area rugs in a no-shoes household it’s not too bad (we both grew up in houses with two stories :)
xo
s
Megan says
Oh man, I can only imagine how tough this job must have been. Excited to see the next steps of putting down new flooring! I myself must do some carpet related research since my pup decided that a corner of carpet didn’t need to be in place anymore and the padding underneath was a tasty treat. I just finished putting in a dog run for him through so hopefully not being cooped up inside while the husband and I are at work will help!
http://delightfuldomicile.blogspot.com/2013/05/if-you-build-it-he-will-be-contained.html
Lisa says
That was a ton of carpet! I can only imagine how much work that was!
On an unrelated note, did you know that your book is on Anthropologie’s website in their picture selling some bookends? How awesome!
http://www.anthropologie.com/anthro/catalog/productdetail.jsp?navAction=jump&id=27210285&cm_mmc=CJ-_-Affiliates-_-rewardStyle-_-11292623
YoungHouseLove says
We did see that! Our jaws dropped. So cool!
-John
Priscilla says
My husband just ripped out the old carpet in our bedroom, hallway and stairs. Ewwwwwww! I love the way the spaces seem cleaner and brighter without the carpet. The only dilemma we have now is that our stairs are made of pine and the rest of the floor in our house are oak. We’re not sure whether we’ll stain the pine a totally different color than the oak, or have each of them replaced with oak to match the rest of the house. I love being able to watch the transformations you are making in your new home. Thanks for taking us along for the ride!
Laurie says
What great fun you’ll have with this new house. I love seeing makeovers!
For what it’s worth, in our new-to-us house we removed the laminate (which wasn’t old but wasn’t all that attractive) and replaced it with unfinished oak which was then sanded and stained. It looks beautiful. Well worth the effort and extra cost.
Brenda says
I dont know if someone already asked, but are you planning to do dark floors? You’ve always talked about how you love the more mocha colored flooring and about how it would be so much easier to refinished before moving.
YoungHouseLove says
Yes, we love a medium rich mocha tone (we had them in our first house and they were great and not too dark- which we hear shows lots of dust).
xo
s
Cara says
My childhood home was a fixer-upper (to put it mildly), and my parents had to remove indoor/outdoor carpeting throughout the house. Indoor/outdoor carpeting that had been glued down. As young as I was, the memories and stories were enough to have me very carefully checking out the flooring situation in any home we toured.
Spring says
We didn’t remove carpet but my mother in law and I just finished wiping every drawer, cupboard and shelf down with TSP in preparation for painting in my new kitchen. We.plan on gutting it sometime next year but in the meantime it needed a facelift (and there were cobwebs inthe shelves -Ew).
Cara (@xandara) says
I am SO GLAD y’all posted this! Boyfriend and I are getting ready to do the same thing in our home! Woohoo!
[email protected] says
Wow – that looks like a tremendous amount of work. The rooms will really benefit from it though – so it will obviously be worth it
Jenna says
I don’t know if anyone said this already but you could get a sprayer and spray all your baseboards while the carpet is up. You’re repainting the walls anyway.. It might save you time later on.. Just a thought…. I can’t wait to see what you guys do.. Good Luck!
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes, that’s the plan! We’d love to knock that out before the floors go in!
xo
s
Bethany says
Take it from someone who removed two rooms worth of staples by hand (pliers, screwdriver, and sweat), that floor scraper was totally a worthy investment!
Kate says
I just noticed that there were 666 comments, so I felt very compelled to add one to disturb that scary number.
Congratulations on the new house, I am so excited to start watching the journey again!
Natalie says
Hi there,
I just have to quickly share my story with you about when I ripped out all of the nasty carpet (I despise carpet btw) in my recently purchased first home. I was ripping the carpet from room to room, and got a little overzealous I suppose, and accidently knocked off the end-cap to the baseboard heater in the guest room. As I bent down to place the end-cap on, lo and behold I find a wad of cash stuffed inside the heating unit. And not just any wad, but a wad of $1000(!!!!) You can only imagine my sheer joy (this type of thing just doesn’t happen to me). Of course I then continue to inspect EVERY heating end-cap for a stash of cash, without luck. The cash certainly helped to pay for the hardwood flooring throughout the house. Plus I sort of like having the feeling that I may wake up one day and discover another little secret hiding spot. So keep your eyes open for any secret spots in your new house…you never know! :)
YoungHouseLove says
Wow! I’m gonna go look a bit more closely at spots around our house now!
-John
Tracy says
This is no joke! Our best friends bought an older home, and after living there for a year, they had the duct work cleaned. They found $14,000 in cash stuffed in the vents!!!!
YoungHouseLove says
Holy cow! That’s amazing!
xo
s
Robin says
I am going to scour my 1930’s house now! You give me hope I could be that lucky too!
Julie says
I haven’t read the 600+ comments, but I do have a word of caution. We had to rip up our carpet and decided to put in hardwood. We had chipboard under the carpet also. The hardwood guy (and everything we read online) said we need OSB under the hardwood instead because the chip board will “blow out” on the back and not hold the wood down from using the nail gun to install the wood. Maybe you won’t be using that type of hardwood, but I just thought I’d give you something to consider.
YoungHouseLove says
Oh yes thanks for the tip Julie! We’re trying to figure out exactly what we have and how to secure the floor so it lasts :)
xo
s
Lindsay says
I spent a few days pulling staples last summer when I was seven
months pregnant. I found that a cheap-o butter knife was just the right width and flexibility to pry those suckers out. And ewww–carpet padding is soo gross – especially in high traffic areas – it makes you realize just how much the vacuum misses!