How To Remove Carpet

**Removing Old Carpeting: A Step-by-Step Guide**

As we begin our journey to remove old carpeting from a room, it's essential to understand that this process can be a bit daunting, especially when dealing with heavy and cumbersome materials. In this article, we will walk you through the basics of removing old carpeting, covering everything from preparing the space to safety precautions.

**The Problem with Underlay**

When inspecting the underlay, which lies beneath the carpet, it's clear that it has been rolled out in a different direction than expected. This is due to how the carpet was cut, and now we need to make adjustments to our plan. By cutting along the edge of the underlay approximately where we expect to cut the carpet, we can create a more manageable section. It's surprising to find that even with the underlay, cutting it requires a decent knife or sharp blade. The underlay is made of foam, and while it may seem straightforward to cut, it does require some care.

**The Staples: A Hazard**

One of the most significant hazards when removing old carpeting is the staples used to secure the underlay in place. These staples can be quite stubborn, especially when trying to remove them. When we install new underlayment, these staples are usually stapled around the perimeter of the room. However, as they lie flat, it's easy to miss their location, and sometimes they become stuck beneath the foam.

**Removing Tack Strips**

As we begin to remove the carpeting, one of the first tasks is to remove the tack strips that were previously holding the carpet in place. These strips can be quite heavy, especially if they've been stapled into the subfloor for a long time. It's essential to handle them carefully, as they can be sharp and may cause injury. We use a flathead screwdriver or pliers to remove these staples, which can be tedious but necessary.

**The Importance of Safety**

When working with knives and heavy materials like carpeting, safety is crucial. One of the most significant hazards is the tack strips themselves, as they can be quite sharp and cause injury if not handled properly. Additionally, the back strain that comes with lifting and rolling up the carpet can be a significant issue. By cutting the carpet into smaller sections and using proper lifting techniques, we can minimize these risks.

**Additional Variations**

While most carpets have foam backing, there are exceptions to this rule. In some cases, the underlay may be stuck down or glued in place, requiring additional effort to remove it. This can happen when dealing with foam-backed carpet, especially if it's been installed on a concrete subfloor over time.

**Conclusion**

Removing old carpeting requires attention to detail and a willingness to tackle various challenges along the way. By understanding the different components of this process, including the underlay, tack strips, and safety precautions, we can make the removal process smoother and more manageable. Whether you're removing old carpeting from a room or tackling other DIY projects, always keep in mind the importance of safety and attention to detail.

**Additional Resources**

For those interested in learning more about DIY projects like this one, check out our website at hostimprovements.com for a wealth of information on various topics. Our YouTube channel also features a range of tutorials and guides, including videos on removing old carpeting. Additionally, we have an active forum where you can ask questions, share your experiences, and get help from others who may be going through similar projects.

**Forum Discussion**

If you're struggling with the removal process or have questions about specific aspects of it, feel free to join our online community to discuss these topics with fellow DIY enthusiasts. Whether you need advice on tackling stubborn staples or want to share your own experiences with removing old carpeting, we welcome your participation in our forum discussions.

**Website and Social Media**

At hostimprovements.com, we're dedicated to providing the best resources for DIY enthusiasts like you. From tutorials and guides to online forums and communities, we strive to make it easy for you to find the information and support you need to tackle various projects with confidence. Follow us on social media to stay up-to-date on our latest content, promotions, and events!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi I'm Shannon from house improvements.com and today we've got some dirty old carpet here in this house and I'm just going to show you what I like to do in order to get rid of it regardless you always end up with some carpet at some point in your home that you've got to change out it's gotten stained dirty the dog peed on it kids spilled juice all over it whatever in this case it's just plain old dirty and we're out so what we're going to do it's a quite a big room so instead of trying to roll this all up in one big piece lug it out the door breaking your back maybe knocking something over in the process and breaking it what I like to do is cut it into more manageable pieces uh but to start with what the first thing you want to do is get rid of any trim any registers anything that's going to be in the way Furniture obviously um so we'll go around we'll pull off the baseboards um then I'm going to show you what what I like to do I like to cut this in into strips so we're going to we're going to take our utility knife and just cut this carpet 067 F feet wide whatever you feel like is is easier to manage we're going to roll that up get it out of the way uh we'll do that a couple times get us a decent spot here to work and then we're going to get rid of the underpad as well and then the tack strips that are around the outside edge holding it down so so I'm just going to start out by getting rid of the uh the baseboards here so I'm going to use my uh red flat bar and we just want to pry along something to uh consider now I just jumped right into this but uh and it wasn't a concern in this case but sometimes your wall will be painted and they might have painted the baseboard right to the wall practically or you they whoever painted you know basically got the paint stuck on the top of the baseboard so in that case if if your baseboard kind of looks like that just take a utility knife and cut along the top of the baseboard between the drywall face and the uh back of the baseboard and that'll just prevent you from damaging the wall surface any and having to patch that up again in this case uh this one doesn't have that issue so we're just going to go along and pry it off if you're trying to save your baseboard uh you want to take it off and Mark on the back with a pencil marker whatever just a bit of a location just so when you're putting it all back in it's easy to figure out uh if you're doing quite a bit of it you can mark it on here and then just put a corresponding mark on the wall as well so you know maybe this is a or number one or whatever just mark it there and then then you have a good idea where it where it goes back on a few days after you uh have taken it off so we got that one piece there that wasn't so bad we got another piece hiding under this pink curtain here now I'm not actually saving these baseboards so I'm not taking a lot of care boy they weren't nailed on that great um so I've got the pieces you can see all kinds of nails sticking out of the back like that if you were going to reuse it then uh you probably want to pull those Nails out with a pair of pliers or something I'm just going to bend them over we're we're tossing this out so I just want to bend them over so that they don't get stepped on in the meantime so we'll just get that bent out out of the way and I'm just going to move these out of our out of our room here so I'm not tripping on okay so we got those out of the way we've got an air duct hot air Grill there we're going to get that out of the way I already undid these these uh little guides for the uh curtain so that isn't an issue so I think I can come right back over here to the edge of the room and like I said I I like to cut the carpet in strips of you know six seven feet whatever you think is easy enough to Lug around you know this is once it's rolled up even in a six foot wide roll it's going to be fairly heavy so you don't have to measure it out or whatever just basically pick a spot that you like pull this up just take your tility knife and start cutting along there doesn't have to be perfect okay so just one little spot here okay so we got that all cut now you probably noticed when I started at this end right underneath here around the perimeter you've got this spiky looking strip here with all these nails poking up out of it that's called The Tack strip I'm just going to pull a little bit more of this up just to get it back out of the way those are some of the sharpest things you're ever going to lay your fingers on on so one thing that's kind of nice and I I could have even had them on before I started making that cut putting some gloves on will help because it doesn't matter how careful you are half time you're going to you're going to catch your finger at some point on these things you definitely don't want to kneel on them now these are going to be held down we've got a wood subfloor so in that case they're just held down with some some nails that are in there if it was a concrete floor they could be glued down with an adhesive so uh just depending on how they're put down you might need a little a bar and a hammer or whatever in this case I'll be able to whoops I'll be able to uh just pry them up so you can kind of get a little bit better look of that you can see all those those Nails there that are uh sticking up and they're they're like razor blade sharp I've never seen anything quite that Pokey and half the time you can even kind of see it on here just from washing your carpet and that sort of thing or spilling drinks or whatever uh it'll go through the carpet and if it touches these it starts to get those Nails a little bit Rusty so you not a bad idea that your tennis shot shot is maybe up to up to Snuff as well because uh you could be poking yourself with Rusty Nails so you just simply I don't usually do this just yet but I guess I'm kind of into it now uh usually I'd wait till I have the underpad and everything out of the room then I just go around and pull all those up you can notice here that on a couple of them the nail that was holding it down actually didn't come out of the floor so just make sure you get get everything out of the way there okay so not difficult to get rid of if you were if you're just putting carpet back in again and those strips are in good shape they seem to be still held down well with the nails or the adhesive or whatever was on there you might be able just to reuse them so uh you know don't go to gung-ho and ripping them up until you you know for sure whether you want to reuse them or or not um and then this case we're going to be putting wood floor down here eventually so we don't need them at all so so anyways back to the carpet now we've got it got it cut into a manable piece I'm going to actually pull it out of that tack strip CU when the when the layers put the carpet in and stretch it that tack strip is what basically holds it back down in place when they're done stretching it in the room so I just want to get it free of that tack strip and then I'm going to start at one end and and roll this up so you know depending on the size of your room you want to start with a fairly tight roll to start with CU it's just going to get bigger as we go those are you who are a little bit on the gangster side you might have rolled up a body in one of these at one time I don't know but then it'll really be heavy so there we go we got our first piece it's a lot more manageable in this case you know even even that piece there it's pretty decent decent carpet too which makes a difference but uh that piece there probably weighs 50 lbs easily so you can you can imagine if I rolled up this whole room then trying to with the length of it and the weight trying to drag it out of here so I'm going to do one more strip just to give us a little more more room here to work and then we'll show the uh getting rid of the underpad now you may have noticed when I was doing that I'm using my uh uh my utility knife and I've got a lot of blades sticking out whenever you do that it's not recommended for one thing but whenever you do you just have to be extremely careful these are snap off blades sometimes you'll be cutting along at whatever you're doing and it'll actually break and you'll slip you don't want to be cutting towards yourself where if that happened you might you know cut your leg or arm or something so I've got this one all loosened off of that tack strip again same thing I'm just going to roll it up I'm being careful here not to kneel on the tack strip that's right underneath me let's roll this all up there it's easily carried out to the truck or dumpster or whatever you're doing with it so now we're at the point where we've got the underlay most times you're going to find that there is an underlay under your carpet uh sometimes you it might be a rubber back carpet so there usually wouldn't be the underlay doesn't weigh nearly as much as the carpeting so and I can see this underlay has been rolling out and strips the other direction from how we're uh been cutting our carpet so what I'm going to do I'm just going to make a cut here at the edge approximately where we cut the carpet off at that one spot just cut this so it's again a little more manageable okay so it's just it's just foam there's nothing super super hard about cutting it although it's surprising you do need a pretty pretty decent knife or sharp blade I should say now the underlay when they install it is going to be stapled generally just around the perimeter and that's what these marks are that you're seeing it's just where it squished down from the Staples so all you need to do is just pull it up the Staples are just going to rip right through it and uh we just get it all loose here and just like did the carpeting we'll get that rolled up quickly and out of the way and like I said this stuff's a lot lighter so a little bigger roll doesn't really make a difference so now we're starting to see our subfloor and uh uh we can see here that now if I had this all done I could go around get all my tack strips off in my case because I'm not putting carpet back in here so i' pull them all off it's nice to try to have a garbage can right handy when you're doing that that way they go right in there you don't have to handle them again and have another inant where you maybe poke yourself so get those out of the way as you're going around doing that you're going to usually it makes it easy to find the Staples from the uh underlay because there's a little chunk of foam usually stuck under them like you see here so we need to get those Staples out of the way as well and usually with this red bar that I use all the time it's thin and enough I can just get underneath the edge of that staple and uh pull those guys out and if I had a little bucket or garbage can like I said I just drag that around the room with me so I could get rid of them right away you could use a flathead screwdriver whatever works depending on the size of the staple or how well they're put in there um sometimes you just can't even see the staple for the foam takes a second to find the edge of it and you may want a pair of pliers dragged around with as well so when you uh get the odd stubborn one you can pull it out with the pliers even a hammer too sometimes you get one brakes off and you by the time you went and found a hammer and came back you can't find the little end that's still sticking up so if you have it right with you it's uh good to go so uh that's really the basics of pulling out carpet um I guess the main safety issues are your back for one thing that's why I cut it into smaller pieces so I can roll it up and it doesn't weigh as much uh the tack strips are probably the most dangerous thing in the whole operation uh and you know you're dealing with a knife right but uh if you uh shouldn't be handling knives you probably don't want to do this job so so I think that pretty much covers everything on removing old carpeting uh other variations you might see I mentioned foam back carpet there a few minutes ago uh a lot of times you'll see that in basement or maybe even on stairs or something uh with the foam back carpet most always it is stuck down especially if it's on concrete over time it's kind of stuck right onto the uh concrete itself so it's going to take some scraping and and work to get that cleaned right off um the odd time with this style underlay like what we just removed you might even see it glued down you know around the perimeter or maybe the odd spot here and there usually that peels off pretty easily once you get get it started um but same thing if it doesn't you may have to do a little bit of scraping of the of the subfloor to to get that excess foam off of there or uh underlay um that's all I can really think of uh I think that pretty much covered it you should know how to take your carpet out of your room now um so thanks for watching you can see all the other videos we have on our YouTube channel you can check out our website at Host improvements.com as well and on the website we do have a forum page so you can go on there got lots of different topics uh maybe you can help somebody else out or maybe you've got a question you want to post there and get some help from somebody yourself so check that all out if you have time and uh thanks for watchinghi I'm Shannon from house improvements.com and today we've got some dirty old carpet here in this house and I'm just going to show you what I like to do in order to get rid of it regardless you always end up with some carpet at some point in your home that you've got to change out it's gotten stained dirty the dog peed on it kids spilled juice all over it whatever in this case it's just plain old dirty and we're out so what we're going to do it's a quite a big room so instead of trying to roll this all up in one big piece lug it out the door breaking your back maybe knocking something over in the process and breaking it what I like to do is cut it into more manageable pieces uh but to start with what the first thing you want to do is get rid of any trim any registers anything that's going to be in the way Furniture obviously um so we'll go around we'll pull off the baseboards um then I'm going to show you what what I like to do I like to cut this in into strips so we're going to we're going to take our utility knife and just cut this carpet 067 F feet wide whatever you feel like is is easier to manage we're going to roll that up get it out of the way uh we'll do that a couple times get us a decent spot here to work and then we're going to get rid of the underpad as well and then the tack strips that are around the outside edge holding it down so so I'm just going to start out by getting rid of the uh the baseboards here so I'm going to use my uh red flat bar and we just want to pry along something to uh consider now I just jumped right into this but uh and it wasn't a concern in this case but sometimes your wall will be painted and they might have painted the baseboard right to the wall practically or you they whoever painted you know basically got the paint stuck on the top of the baseboard so in that case if if your baseboard kind of looks like that just take a utility knife and cut along the top of the baseboard between the drywall face and the uh back of the baseboard and that'll just prevent you from damaging the wall surface any and having to patch that up again in this case uh this one doesn't have that issue so we're just going to go along and pry it off if you're trying to save your baseboard uh you want to take it off and Mark on the back with a pencil marker whatever just a bit of a location just so when you're putting it all back in it's easy to figure out uh if you're doing quite a bit of it you can mark it on here and then just put a corresponding mark on the wall as well so you know maybe this is a or number one or whatever just mark it there and then then you have a good idea where it where it goes back on a few days after you uh have taken it off so we got that one piece there that wasn't so bad we got another piece hiding under this pink curtain here now I'm not actually saving these baseboards so I'm not taking a lot of care boy they weren't nailed on that great um so I've got the pieces you can see all kinds of nails sticking out of the back like that if you were going to reuse it then uh you probably want to pull those Nails out with a pair of pliers or something I'm just going to bend them over we're we're tossing this out so I just want to bend them over so that they don't get stepped on in the meantime so we'll just get that bent out out of the way and I'm just going to move these out of our out of our room here so I'm not tripping on okay so we got those out of the way we've got an air duct hot air Grill there we're going to get that out of the way I already undid these these uh little guides for the uh curtain so that isn't an issue so I think I can come right back over here to the edge of the room and like I said I I like to cut the carpet in strips of you know six seven feet whatever you think is easy enough to Lug around you know this is once it's rolled up even in a six foot wide roll it's going to be fairly heavy so you don't have to measure it out or whatever just basically pick a spot that you like pull this up just take your tility knife and start cutting along there doesn't have to be perfect okay so just one little spot here okay so we got that all cut now you probably noticed when I started at this end right underneath here around the perimeter you've got this spiky looking strip here with all these nails poking up out of it that's called The Tack strip I'm just going to pull a little bit more of this up just to get it back out of the way those are some of the sharpest things you're ever going to lay your fingers on on so one thing that's kind of nice and I I could have even had them on before I started making that cut putting some gloves on will help because it doesn't matter how careful you are half time you're going to you're going to catch your finger at some point on these things you definitely don't want to kneel on them now these are going to be held down we've got a wood subfloor so in that case they're just held down with some some nails that are in there if it was a concrete floor they could be glued down with an adhesive so uh just depending on how they're put down you might need a little a bar and a hammer or whatever in this case I'll be able to whoops I'll be able to uh just pry them up so you can kind of get a little bit better look of that you can see all those those Nails there that are uh sticking up and they're they're like razor blade sharp I've never seen anything quite that Pokey and half the time you can even kind of see it on here just from washing your carpet and that sort of thing or spilling drinks or whatever uh it'll go through the carpet and if it touches these it starts to get those Nails a little bit Rusty so you not a bad idea that your tennis shot shot is maybe up to up to Snuff as well because uh you could be poking yourself with Rusty Nails so you just simply I don't usually do this just yet but I guess I'm kind of into it now uh usually I'd wait till I have the underpad and everything out of the room then I just go around and pull all those up you can notice here that on a couple of them the nail that was holding it down actually didn't come out of the floor so just make sure you get get everything out of the way there okay so not difficult to get rid of if you were if you're just putting carpet back in again and those strips are in good shape they seem to be still held down well with the nails or the adhesive or whatever was on there you might be able just to reuse them so uh you know don't go to gung-ho and ripping them up until you you know for sure whether you want to reuse them or or not um and then this case we're going to be putting wood floor down here eventually so we don't need them at all so so anyways back to the carpet now we've got it got it cut into a manable piece I'm going to actually pull it out of that tack strip CU when the when the layers put the carpet in and stretch it that tack strip is what basically holds it back down in place when they're done stretching it in the room so I just want to get it free of that tack strip and then I'm going to start at one end and and roll this up so you know depending on the size of your room you want to start with a fairly tight roll to start with CU it's just going to get bigger as we go those are you who are a little bit on the gangster side you might have rolled up a body in one of these at one time I don't know but then it'll really be heavy so there we go we got our first piece it's a lot more manageable in this case you know even even that piece there it's pretty decent decent carpet too which makes a difference but uh that piece there probably weighs 50 lbs easily so you can you can imagine if I rolled up this whole room then trying to with the length of it and the weight trying to drag it out of here so I'm going to do one more strip just to give us a little more more room here to work and then we'll show the uh getting rid of the underpad now you may have noticed when I was doing that I'm using my uh uh my utility knife and I've got a lot of blades sticking out whenever you do that it's not recommended for one thing but whenever you do you just have to be extremely careful these are snap off blades sometimes you'll be cutting along at whatever you're doing and it'll actually break and you'll slip you don't want to be cutting towards yourself where if that happened you might you know cut your leg or arm or something so I've got this one all loosened off of that tack strip again same thing I'm just going to roll it up I'm being careful here not to kneel on the tack strip that's right underneath me let's roll this all up there it's easily carried out to the truck or dumpster or whatever you're doing with it so now we're at the point where we've got the underlay most times you're going to find that there is an underlay under your carpet uh sometimes you it might be a rubber back carpet so there usually wouldn't be the underlay doesn't weigh nearly as much as the carpeting so and I can see this underlay has been rolling out and strips the other direction from how we're uh been cutting our carpet so what I'm going to do I'm just going to make a cut here at the edge approximately where we cut the carpet off at that one spot just cut this so it's again a little more manageable okay so it's just it's just foam there's nothing super super hard about cutting it although it's surprising you do need a pretty pretty decent knife or sharp blade I should say now the underlay when they install it is going to be stapled generally just around the perimeter and that's what these marks are that you're seeing it's just where it squished down from the Staples so all you need to do is just pull it up the Staples are just going to rip right through it and uh we just get it all loose here and just like did the carpeting we'll get that rolled up quickly and out of the way and like I said this stuff's a lot lighter so a little bigger roll doesn't really make a difference so now we're starting to see our subfloor and uh uh we can see here that now if I had this all done I could go around get all my tack strips off in my case because I'm not putting carpet back in here so i' pull them all off it's nice to try to have a garbage can right handy when you're doing that that way they go right in there you don't have to handle them again and have another inant where you maybe poke yourself so get those out of the way as you're going around doing that you're going to usually it makes it easy to find the Staples from the uh underlay because there's a little chunk of foam usually stuck under them like you see here so we need to get those Staples out of the way as well and usually with this red bar that I use all the time it's thin and enough I can just get underneath the edge of that staple and uh pull those guys out and if I had a little bucket or garbage can like I said I just drag that around the room with me so I could get rid of them right away you could use a flathead screwdriver whatever works depending on the size of the staple or how well they're put in there um sometimes you just can't even see the staple for the foam takes a second to find the edge of it and you may want a pair of pliers dragged around with as well so when you uh get the odd stubborn one you can pull it out with the pliers even a hammer too sometimes you get one brakes off and you by the time you went and found a hammer and came back you can't find the little end that's still sticking up so if you have it right with you it's uh good to go so uh that's really the basics of pulling out carpet um I guess the main safety issues are your back for one thing that's why I cut it into smaller pieces so I can roll it up and it doesn't weigh as much uh the tack strips are probably the most dangerous thing in the whole operation uh and you know you're dealing with a knife right but uh if you uh shouldn't be handling knives you probably don't want to do this job so so I think that pretty much covers everything on removing old carpeting uh other variations you might see I mentioned foam back carpet there a few minutes ago uh a lot of times you'll see that in basement or maybe even on stairs or something uh with the foam back carpet most always it is stuck down especially if it's on concrete over time it's kind of stuck right onto the uh concrete itself so it's going to take some scraping and and work to get that cleaned right off um the odd time with this style underlay like what we just removed you might even see it glued down you know around the perimeter or maybe the odd spot here and there usually that peels off pretty easily once you get get it started um but same thing if it doesn't you may have to do a little bit of scraping of the of the subfloor to to get that excess foam off of there or uh underlay um that's all I can really think of uh I think that pretty much covered it you should know how to take your carpet out of your room now um so thanks for watching you can see all the other videos we have on our YouTube channel you can check out our website at Host improvements.com as well and on the website we do have a forum page so you can go on there got lots of different topics uh maybe you can help somebody else out or maybe you've got a question you want to post there and get some help from somebody yourself so check that all out if you have time and uh thanks for watching\n"