Taking Up Carpet From Hardwood Floors

Stripping hardwood flooring the wrong way can cost you hours of backbreaking work leave you with an enormous mess and even cause permanent damage to your subflooring.

Taking up carpet from hardwood floors.

Prybar for pulling up the carpet tack strips. Use your standard screwdriver to pry them from the floor. Tools for restoring hardwood floors under carpet. It s a project for an optimist if there ever was one.

Utility knife for cutting up carpet and or padding into more manageable size strips for rolling up and removing from the room. Or are you planning a project of your own. Removing carpet to expose the wood floor underneath. The basic rule of thumb with removing the carpet for a hardwood installation is that you just go in reverse to take things back to the original subfloor.

Dispose of tacking strips and any staples or nails that held the strips in place. Even though you are probably eager and excited to finally see your hardwood floors underneath please push down your excitement and take this step slow. Have you tried restoring hardwood floors under carpet. If you are trying to salvage the floor underneath make sure you do not cut grooves in the floor with the knife.

Use a utility knife or carpet knife to slice the carpet into manageable strips and roll the strips up as you go. Carpet padding strips staples nails glue. While it pays to work slowly to remove the carpet whether it was secured with adhesive a tack strip and staples or both it s understandable to feel a growing sense of anticipation before you lay eyes on the floor for the first time. Start by pulling up the carpet.

The next step would be to refinish your floors but before you can do this you need to sand them to remove any scuff marks left by the carpet or by your cleaning. Not only will it help to loosen any extra dirt and grime but in the event that you also missed a little bit of adhesive the hot steam from the mop will help to loosen the material so it can be. Use the pliers to pull up any staples that remain stuck in the floor. Remove the carpet tacking strips which may be nailed or stapled to the hardwood floor.

One way to do this is to lift the carpet away from the floor as you cut. Once the carpet is up it is not going to be very pretty. The home stretch refinishing after sanding your floors you should plug any holes caused by nails by filling them with wood plugs or wood paste a combination of saw dust and white. But take it from the experienced pros who have.