Goodbye Old Carpet, Hello Wood Floors!

Kelly-n-Tony
by Kelly-n-Tony
5 Materials
2 Hours
Easy
Our home is 100 years old and a few rooms were carpeted mysteries. I wanted to start working on the room that was going to become a guest bedroom. ...
Old dingy, wrinkled carpet. Ugly!
My daughter decided to pull a corner up and have a peek under the carpet and padding....
We were so excited that there were nice hardwood floors under that yucky carpet so we piled the furniture on one side of the room and started pulling the carpet and padding up.


If you have a box cutter it's easiest if you slice it into 4 foot wide sections, roll, and tie the bundles but you can just fold them up to cart it all out. But be careful not to slice the wood floor if it's nice like ours.


All around the edges of the room are tack strips which look like rulers with sharp tacks sticking upward. We found most were easy to pull up but some sections took a bit of work so use the claw of a hammer, or even a pry bar tapped with the hammer head to remove it.


Contractor trash bags are handy for putting these wicked sharp tack strips into.


(For those curious that's a bed frame she's working around because we didn't completely empty the room)
The padding didn't completely come up where there were nails so pliers come in handy.
This is a great job for kids and grandkids- pliers to pull nails and a container to put the nails and padding scraps in. icon


But look at that great hardwood floor that was hiding under the yucky carpet! icon It was so much easier then we thought and didn't take long either.
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Frequently asked questions
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  • Debbie Raymond Mcleod Debbie Raymond Mcleod on Sep 13, 2019

    We have hard wood floors though out our house but when we took up the carpet to recarpet the floors were so squeaky we tried baby powder but it didn’t work would we have to pull up all the old wood if we put down new?

  • Carol Larive Carol Larive on Nov 08, 2019
    I pulled up the carpet in my hallway, but there’s a lot of glue,paper like stuff. How do I get it off?
  • Mum with dreams Mum with dreams on Sep 03, 2020

    Oh my gosh you were lucky!! When we did it when I was a teen to my stepdads parents home the finish was awful and we had to go through 3 layers of carpet, 4 layers of Lino with newspaper as padding (what?! I know!) and we found random coins in between layers! How?! Was it on purpose?? We had to ‘head’ all the nails, sand back and stain & polish! Look at that finish just waiting for you!

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4 of 34 comments
  • Rhonda Rhonda on Sep 03, 2020

    We just pulled up 35 year old stained, rolling carpet. Underneath,The most beautiful unfinished hardwood floors. Had them sanded and stained natural with water based. They are Beautiful.

  • Valerie Burge Valerie Burge on Sep 04, 2020

    Such a great surprise! I peeked under my bedroom carpet...and it's plywood. LOL

    • See 1 previous
    • Valerie Burge Valerie Burge on Sep 04, 2020

      Excellent point!!

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