How to Remove Old Carpeting 

By Debbie Berne

One of the best ways to update the look of a room is to replace any old, dingy carpeting.

Pulling out old carpeting is pretty simple as long as you have the right supplies and some free time.

The main tools you will need are a vacuum, utility knife, some trash bags and a flathead screwdriver.

The first thing you need to do is vacuum. Why would you have to vacuum carpet that you are just going to rip up? You are going to be crawling on your hands and knees, leaning down and breathing in the all of the dust and allergens that have made their homes in your carpet over the years. Buy taking 5 minutes to vacuum you can limit the pollutants you are going to be breathing into your lungs and save yourself hours of sneezing misery.

Begin cutting about 2 feet from a corner of the room. Make an even 2 foot wide strip that runs the length of the room, being sure to press down hard enough to cut through the backing of the carpet and the pad underneath. Different types of carpeting are easier to cut than others. An older style of carpet, like shag, is especially difficult to cut through since the backing is made out of stronger plastic than modern carpeting and might require 2 or 3 tries.

Once you cut the strip, roll it up and remove it from the room. It takes longer to cut the carpet into strips than it would to pull the whole thing up at once, but it is a lot easier to fit a couple 2 foot rolls of old carpeting into some trash bags or the back of a car than an one 11 foot roll. If you find that you are having problems cutting through the carpet, make sure that you are using a sharp blade in your knife. Replacement blades can be found in any home improvement store, are inexpensive and most come about 50 to a box.

One of the trickiest parts of removing carpet is separating it from the tack strip that holds it to the floor. Be very careful not to blindly grab underneath the carpet to pull, since the tacks can easily rip straight through your fingernail and nail bed. This will bleed a lot, hurt like you would not believe and take a couple weeks to heal completely.

After the carpet and padding has been removed all that is left is to pull the remaining staples that were securing the padding from the floor. Use the flathead screwdriver to pry the staples up. If you have problems getting the screwdriver under the staple you can tap the handle lightly with a hammer to wedge it underneath. It is ok if you have a couple of staples that just will not come up. You can hammer them down into the floor and they should not cause any problems.

You can use the vacuum to pull up any extra padding still stuck to the floor.

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