We Bought A Fixer Upper! Week 1: Carpet Removal

After we closed on the house, the first thing we did was saber a bottle of champagne and celebrate! But our celebration was brief, because the next day we got right to work!

The first task was to remove all of the nasty carpets from the living room and bedrooms. These carpets may or may not have been original to this 1970’s house. They were absolutely disgusting! So we turned on some tunes, donned masks and gloves, and got to it. I could not believe that amount of dirt that was in and underneath these carpets! It looked like they had never been cleaned. It makes me never want to have carpets in a house ever again.

Removing carpets isn’t terribly difficult and I’ll share a couple tips to help you out in case you ever need to do this and you know what to expect!

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The right tools can help quite a bit too! Here’s what you will need:

• Masks
• Safety glasses
• Work gloves
• Work boots (these are my favorites) Use code SELENEBUILDS10 for $10 off!
• Utility knife
• Flathead screwdriver
• Hammer
• Needle nose pliers
• Broom and dust pan
• Shop Vac

I also made a YouTube tutorial on how to remove carpets as well!

Ok here we go! Let’s get these carpets out!

NOTE: I should also mention that in most houses, you may need to remove all of the baseboards and door trim first. I did not go over these steps because this house did not have any baseboards to remove! If you would like a tutorial on how to remove baseboards and trim, let me know and I can certainly do that for you!

Step 1: Take your utility knife and cut the carpet into manageable strips. If you try to remove the carpet in one piece, it is extremely heavy, so cutting it up into 6-8ft strips makes it more manageable. You can see in the video that the smaller pieces we were able to carry out on our own, the largest pieces both of us needed to carry.

Once you’ve cut strips, roll up each piece and throw it out. I should mention that it is helpful to have a dump trailer ready to go since you will have a lot to garbage dispose of.

STEP 2: Carpet Pad Removal

Underneath the carpet, there is usually a carpet pad that also needs to be removed. If you’re lucky, it’s not glued down too well and you can pull it right up and roll it up and throw it out exactly the same way as the carpet. If you’re unlucky and it’s glued down, you may need a scraper to get it completely off wherever the glue is. In our case, either the glue was so old and had disintegrated, or they hadn’t used any. Once you get all of the pads up, go over the floors with a shop vac.

STEP 3: Tack Strip Removal

Now comes the fun part. Removing the tack strips from the perimeter of the rooms, and the staples that hold down the rug pad. The tack strips are thin strips of wood that are nailed to the subfloor and have sharp tacks sticking up which is what holds the carpet in place. Make sure you’re wearing gloves when you remove these because they are sharp!

The tack strips can be removed with the flat head screwdriver and a hammer. There are other tools you can use for this, but most people have these two things on hand and they work just fine so there is no need to buy a specialty tool. Unless you plan on removing carpets for a living, you’re probably never going to do this again.

STEP 4: Staple Removal

The staples are what hold the rug pads down and will be in rows at the seams of the rug pads. If you’re lucky, they didn’t use a million staples! In our case, they used a million staples. This is the most time consuming part of the entire job. Removing every single staple. Again, there are specialty tools for this, but I just used the same flathead screwdriver and a hammer and it works just fine. You’ll also need some pliers for when the staples break and you need the pliers to pull out the pieces. Occasionally you may just need to hammer some in if you can’t get them out.

Alright! We’re done! The carpets are out and we’re ready for the next part of the renovation which is removing the popcorn ceilings! Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it!

Also if you feel so inclined, my brother and I are doing this renovation on a budget and would love your help! Your donations allow me to continue to provide content for free on all platforms and keep this blog going so THANK YOU!