How to Remove Old Carpet to Reveal a Hardwood Floor

One simple thing you can do to spruce up you home is to remove old dirty worn-out carpet. If you are lucky, you might have a nice hardwood flooring under that old carpet. If you do, here is how to remove the carpet and prepare your hardwood floor for refinishing.

Difficulty:

Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Knee pads
• Carpet knife
• Large heavy-duty garbage bags
• Mask

1. First, move all the furniature out of the room. This make is much easier to pull up the old carpet. If you can't move the furnature out, then move it to one side of the room, remove the carpet, move the furnature to the finished side of the room and continue.

2. Take off the moldings. The carpet is held in place by strips of carpet tack and the molding helps hold the carpet to the carpet tack.

3. Start in a corner and lift the carpet from the floor. The carpet might be fastened quite well, so you may have to pry it up. Once you get that first corner of carpet up, the rest should come up more easily.

4. Begin to pull the carpet from the floor. For this step you might want to wear a mask or some kind of construction respirator/filter. Carpets collect a lot of dust over the years and no amount of vacuming will get it all. Pulling up the carpet will probably stur up some dust.

5. As you pull up the carpet, you might want to use the carpet knife to cut the carpet into smaller more managable pieces and then put the pieces into the garbage bags.

6. After you pull up the carpet, it's time to take up the carpet padding. This will be the worst part of the job as the carpet padding is where the most dirt collects. If you have pets, then the padding (as well as the carpet ) may contain stains and give off an unpleasant odor.

7. Pulling up the carpet padding is easy. It will probably rip as you pull it up, but just tear it into smaller pieces and put the pieces into garbage bags. Once you have the padding pulled up, you will have to go around the floor and remove the staples that held the carpet padding down. A pair of needlenose pliers or wire cutters is best for this. You may need a screwdriver or knife to help pry up the staples.

8. After you pull up the carpet, padding and remove the staples you will need to clean the floor. If you have a wood subfloor (plywood or OSB) then sweeping and a damp mop will clean it well. If you have hardwood floor, then your cleaning will depend on what type of floor. Waxed floors and polyurathane floors are cleaned and restored differently.