Anyone pull up carpeting on their own? (UPDATE w/ pics!)

[essnce629]

DS1, DS2, and the playroom rooms all have old berber-like carpet that is probably at least 10 years old. I've had it cleaned professionally and cleaned it myself with my own carpet cleaner but they are still gross. DS1's room is the worse even though we don't wear shoes in the house. Ideally I'd want to have hardwood flooring like the rest of the house, since the kids have eczema and allergies and that's the best choice, but I'd even settle on new carpet. DH doesn't want to do either right now. I'm so sick of looking at the gross carpet in his room that I just want to go in there and tear it all up myself. I just pulled a part up along the edge and there's wood under there. I ordered a large 8x10 rug for DS1's room from Rugs USA during the 70% off deal and it should be here as early as tomorrow. I'm thinking that whatever I find under the carpet has got to be better than the gross carpet and I can just lay the new rug down till we figure out a permanent situation. His room is small, probably 11x11. Am I crazy for wanting to do this? And on my own since DH works like 20 hour days! Can this be a one person job?

[Kymberley]

I pulled up the carpet in DS's room when I was pregnant. The carpet was the easy part. The pad and the staples were a nightmare. It took a couple of days, but I got it done all by myself.

[ha98ed14]

Am I crazy for wanting to do this? And on my own since DH works like 20 hour days! Can this be a one person job?

I don't think your crazy; I hate carpet, too. I have ripped it up before, but we found asbestos tile underneath, so it was worse. I've seen it ripped up in other houses and the ease of having it ripped up really depends on whether or not they glued the padding to the subfloor. If you have hardwood under the carpet, chances are they did not glue it down. You could pull it up and just live with the less-than-perfect floor with the area rug to cover it. The other possibility is that there is a plywood subfloor and they glued the carpet pad to it. In that case, you may have to replace the subfloor or put down another one to cover the remainents of the pad that will be left stuck to the subfloor. Whether or not you want to live with the possibility of pad-glued-to-plywood is your call... I would try to pull back a good 6-12 inches and get a feel for what is in there before ripping up the whole thing.

[fedoragirl]

I've pulled up carpet on my own too. Cat peed all over it and yes, I was 8 months pregnant. LOL Must be those pregnancy hormones urging us to remove all gross things.
The glue was the hardest to remove--we had marble flooring under it. Local, inexpensive marble but who puts a gross, grey carpet over it? I'd rather deal with whatever is underneath than looking and smelling at carpet.

[kaitlyns.mom]

We did this recently. Underneath we found wood that had to be demolished due to mold - we ripped that out as well. And underneath THAT was concrete covered in adhesive, which had to be sanded off.

It can be done though, and you will save $$ doing it yourself! Just use a blade to slice the carpet down the middle of the room before rolling it up, so it's in smaller pieces. It's still incredibly heavy.

[elbert]

Also did it myself...it wasn't difficult, but it can be messy/dusty. I actually wore safety glasses, too, because pulling out those staples took some force at times.

Ultimately, we did get the hard wood under the carpet refinished and I'm not sure how much I saved pulling it up myself as opposed to having the guys do it. That said, I still felt proud of myself...it was a "girl power" thing, I think!

[trcy]

The carpet was the easy part. The pad and the staples were a nightmare. It took a couple of days, but I got it done all by myself.
:yeahthat:

[essnce629]

I've seen it ripped up in other houses and the ease of having it ripped up really depends on whether or not they glued the padding to the subfloor. If you have hardwood under the carpet, chances are they did not glue it down.

I just checked and the padding is stapled down, not glued.

[brittone2]

We've done it lots of times. We just pulled it up in our office/study and our dining room. We ripped out the carpet in both rooms, removed staples and tack strips, and had new laminate floors down in 1.5 rooms in one day, and finished the flooring in the 2nd room in an evening. We are planning to do hardwood, but I have an aging dog AND and old cat (and a 3 yo), so I'm not quite ready to pull the trigger on long term flooring plans. We did laminate for not much more than area rugs. DH has laid flooring for us many times, so he was quick with it. I find removing staples oddly therapeutic, LOL. I also really hated my carpeting ;)

After Sandy went through, we had our basement remediated. However, our stairs weren't damaged, so DH and I pulled all of that up on our own (stairs have MANY more staples than regular floors and the angles make it challenging). I want to do our main staircase right now and redo that with retrofitted treads from Nustair.
The kids helped us with the most recent staple removal. Safety glasses and some tools (yes, there are risks involved but we like including them) and they were actually rather helpful this time, especially my almost 10 yo who has pretty good manual skills and is handy and careful/conscientious.

for staple removal I usually prefer a flat head screwdriver and a rubber mallet to tap it with. I keep the screwdriver almost horizontal to the floor (try to minimizing gouging the floor too much). Once you get the hang of it, most of the time I find I don't need pliers, but every few staples I will need them. I also have had good luck with a specific type of screwdriver that looks like a mini crowbar. I don't know what the name of it is and DH isn't sure either. He said it is "similar to a small "cat's paw." We have a small version of something this shape, but not much wider than a flat head screwdriver. Has the forked end to it. I remember using that one on the stairs and finding it handy. I didn't need it much for the most recent carpet staple removal (dining room and office). https://www.google.com/search?q=forked+screwdriver&client=firefox-a&hs=q11&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&source=iu&imgil=yiq8E2hvLfYyoM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252F encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9 GcQu2OR61AivCQX_T2kvLc0tuAN6Ninu61Ijx6sLdhNPJIDuA2 5A%253B240%253B115%253Bbe0rIcS7O6O41M%253Bhttp%252 53A%25252F%25252Fforums.nicoclub.com%25252F1993-infiniti-g20-power-window-trouble-t396680.html&sa=X&ei=wTquUuLZN7OwsATvvYG4DA&ved=0CFYQ9QEwAg&biw=1366&bih=603#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=yiq8E2hvLfYyoM%3A%3Bbe0rIcS7O6O41M%3Bhttp%25 3A%252F%252Fbuy1.snapon.com%252Fcatalog%252FOBJECT S%252F55400%252F55354.JPG%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Ffor ums.nicoclub.com%252F1993-infiniti-g20-power-window-trouble-t396680.html%3B240%3B115

[crl]

We did it in our first house. Sort of like you, we had gross carpeting. We cut a bit out under a bed and it was okay looking hardwood so we risked it and ripped it all up. Our was stapled down. It was hard work, but not tricky or anything. And it was a huge improvement for us. We were able to have the floors refinished about six months later.

It was a ton of dust underneath (so gross I NEVER want carpet again) and we were both itchy and sneezing and coughing from it. So depending on how bad your kids are you might want to do it when they aren't around.

Also, depending on your trash removal situation you may want to consider how you will dispose of it. Our trash service at the time would haul it away with our regular trash as long as we cut it down to a certain size. Where we live now we would have to make special arrangements.

Catherine

[brittone2]

Yeah, and just as an aside, I am going to say that carpet padding, etc probably has a lot of flame retardants, so vacuum up the dust thoroughly. Flame retardants like to bind to dust. That didn't stop me from ripping it up with glee, but I tried keeping the kids out til we ripped it up and vacuumed.

[trales]

We ripped all the carpet up ourselves. the carpet came right up, I pryed up the stapled pad and rolled as I went along, the I vacuumed, then I pulled up all the staples. When it was all done, I felt so good. It made an amazing difference. I am getting ready to do DD's room soon.

[BunnyBee]

We've done it ourselves several times. Twice to save money on the new carpet install and recently when our basement flooded. You may want to wear dust masks and glasses (don't have on your good eyeglasses if you wear them!), especially if you have allergies. Work gloves are helpful too because the ripped edges are scratchy and the staples hurt. Or they hurt our non-used-to-manual-labor hands. ;)

[OKKiddo]

DS1, DS2, and the playroom rooms all have old berber-like carpet that is probably at least 10 years old. I've had it cleaned professionally and cleaned it myself with my own carpet cleaner but they are still gross. DS1's room is the worse even though we don't wear shoes in the house. Ideally I'd want to have hardwood flooring like the rest of the house, since the kids have eczema and allergies and that's the best choice, but I'd even settle on new carpet. DH doesn't want to do either right now. I'm so sick of looking at the gross carpet in his room that I just want to go in there and tear it all up myself. I just pulled a part up along the edge and there's wood under there. I ordered a large 8x10 rug for DS1's room from Rugs USA during the 70% off deal and it should be here as early as tomorrow. I'm thinking that whatever I find under the carpet has got to be better than the gross carpet and I can just lay the new rug down till we figure out a permanent situation. His room is small, probably 11x11. Am I crazy for wanting to do this? And on my own since DH works like 20 hour days! Can this be a one person job?


I pulled up the carpet in DS's room when I was pregnant. The carpet was the easy part. The pad and the staples were a nightmare. It took a couple of days, but I got it done all by myself.

We pulled up the carpet in our house when we moved back to it after renting it out for 7 years. It was nasTy!! It was easy though, we just used box cutters to take it out in small pieces that we could manage, roll it up and carry it out to the home depot construction disposal bag. Unlike Kymberley's experience, our padding came up easily because it was over 11 years old (4 years old when we bought it plus the 7 years of rental). The tack strips came up with a crow bar and we were done with our entire house (1,800 sq feet of floor to floor except in bathrooms and kitchen) in just a half a day. It was just my husband and I doing it too. Get face masks though! The dust/carpet residue is DISGUSTING!! I hate carpet myself so I would totally rip it out if I were you too!

[essnce629]

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Um yeah, better than expected! Can't believe I waited 3 years to deal with this nasty carpet! DS1 helped and we wore masks and gloves from our earthquake emergency kit! I had a super sharp box cutter in the kit too which made it super easy to cut the carpet into strips and roll it up into manageable pieces. DS1 is pulling up all the pad staples now and I'm going to work on the tack strips. I can't believe how much better it looks already! Thanks everyone for all your help! A little bit of refinishing and I think it will look 10 times better!

[queenmama]

Awesome!

I ripped up our living room carpet (the only carpet in our house) and pad alone one day while DH was at work because I just. couldn't. take. it. anymore!! We haven't refinished the wood yet but it's still loads nicer than the grotty old carpet!

Lara

[kep]

Wow, that turned out so nice! I am dying to do our upstairs, but I am betting that we have unfinished sub-floor underneath. The rest of our house is hardwoods, and the beige (cheap) carpet upstairs has not worn well with four kids. Nice job!

[StantonHyde]

Mop it with Murphy's oil soap--does great on wood floors. I pulled up carpet in my first house and didn't even need to refinish it--just mopped with Murphy's!

[SnuggleBuggles]

Looks great!

It's on my wish list to do in our family room. Personally, I prefer carpeting in here but not this carpeting. I pulled up a portion and the hardwoods are right there and very pretty though. I'm tempted to yank this carpeting and decide later about installing new carpeting. I'd knock it out personally but the TV, 3 piece sectional...are all in here and I can't move them solo. I may enlist a friend or 2 to help during the day.

[crl]

I have always heard not to use Murphy's Oil Soap on hardwood floors as it can build up and cause problems when you have them refinished.

Looks great! That's what happened when we pulled up our carpet, so much better. :)

Catherine

[o_mom]

A good cleaning and you might be good to go! We did that in a room at our old house - just cleaned and buffed, IIRC. I did fill the holes with putty, too.

[essnce629]

So all the staples and tack strips have been removed! What did you guys use to clean the floors right after pulling up the carpet? I've already swept and vacuumed it. I just googled "cleaning wood floors after carpet removal" and this is the first site that came up from ehow:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4843517_wood-floors-after-removing-carpets.html

It says to clean with diluted Murphy Oil Soap, then spray and buff with a vinegar/water mix, then wipe over the entire floor with a concentrated mixture of black tea. What do you think? Sounds doable if I do it tomorrow while the kids are at school. DS1's rug is arriving tomorrow as well so I want the floor cleaned before I put the rug down and bring all the furniture back in. DS1 is sleeping in DS2's room tonight.

[o_mom]

I don't remember exactly, but I don't think I did that much - probably just a damp mop followed by a mop with Murphy's.

[jacksmomtobe]

Mop it with Murphy's oil soap--does great on wood floors. I pulled up carpet in my first house and didn't even need to refinish it--just mopped with Murphy's!
I also had the same result in an apartment I lived in where the landlord was ok with us making improvements. Between the rugs my roommates & I ripped up and the dated wallpaper we removed boy did we leave the place looking much better when we left than it was when arrived. It's amazing what a major change removing a carpet can make with a decent floor hidden underneath. Glad this project worked out for the op!