- Hey everybody, Jeff here
on a nice rainy afternoon. We got a great video here for you today. We're gonna talk about
those annoying times when you have to pull out
these carpet tack strips, and you're probably
wondering how do you do it and what's the best way to do it. What are the good methodologies? Well, first of all, what
are these tack strips? This is what they tack
the carpets down with. So we pulled up the carpets, and as you can see right down here, you'll see these carpet tack strips are all around the edge of the floor here. And they basically look like this. So we'll give you a nice
little closeup shot here. It's just a strip of wood
with these nails in it. So you see how they're
nailed into the concrete. Now this here, it's concrete floor. And so the installers just
nailed them right in there. And so it's our job now
to pull these back up. And I always try to get
them up in one piece. The wrong thing to do is to take them up into several pieces and bust them up you know, when you're taking them up. So we're going to show you
the proper way to do it, and we're also going to show
you the wrong way to do it. Okay, so these are the
tools that I typically use. These are my favorite tools. And really, the ones that I use 90% of the time are just these two here, just the hammer and my
little demo bar here. Sometimes I'll use this one. Sometimes you need to
get into smaller spaces, and I also have little teeny tiny versions of things like this, but
I hardly ever use them. Once in a blue moon, I'll
use a five-in-one too, and I like this because
the blade is real stiff. And you can get underneath stuff and pry stuff up if you have
to as a worst case scenario. But what I wanna show you is how this works with this pry bar here. So there's a right way and a
wrong way to pull these up. The best way as you can see, see how the nails are gonna
nail it into the concrete here? So where do you think
would be the best spot to lift it from? You would wanna get this tool and stick it right under the
nail there and then pry it up. That's where you have the
most mechanical leverage. That makes the most sense. So knowing that, where do you
think would be the worst spot to try to pull this up? Well, the worst spot
would be in the middle 'cause if you tried to come in the middle and lift this thing up,
you're gonna break it. So I'm gonna show you how I like to do it and everybody of course
has their own methods. But this works for us pretty good. And it gives us a good speed
and efficiency to work with when you're doing this
kind of production volume. So, I'm gonna show you what I do, is I always start, and I
go off in the corner here. And I'm gonna get the crowbar here. You can see the nail is right there. So, you just wanna tap it
right under it like that. And then lift it up. And you don't wanna slam and
make this whole thing break 'cause I wanna pull this
whole guy up in one piece. So I'm gonna hit the other
side, and there he is. Now, what happens when you're
left with a nail behind? Well, you can either get
it with this side of it and pull it up like that. If you get one that's not loose enough, it's really tight, then you wanna use your mechanical advantage
and go with the other side. So let's say there's a nail here, you would go right there
and just go like that. Because you're using what
we call the moment arm so the more distance you have away from the fulcrum point here,
the more force you have. So that's all you gotta remember. So we're gonna come in on this one. This one looks already like
it's already a little bit loose, so there's really not much to do there. And I'll I do is I go right down the line every six inches or so
to each one of the nails, give it a quick shot. And he's already up,
and he's in one piece. And notice that I didn't
leave any splinters anywhere. And we're just gonna go down
the row here to the next one. Yeah, hear that thunder. I love that thunder. So you can see we're keeping
it nice and clean here. And on occasion you might have one that breaks on you a little bit. There was some rotting here, or sometimes it'll
shatter around the nail, but that's fine because for
the most part you can see here, this guy came up pretty much intact. And you always find all the stories of people's lives under these things. You can see where there was a leak before and where that wasn't. Here the wood rotted a little bit. The nail's right there. And then afterwards as
you go down the line, you can come back and you'll see all the nails that are still there, and you just go in there and yank 'em out. And you can see on the concrete, see how it leaves like
a little crater there? So you wanna sweep all of that up, and we always vacuum
thoroughly when we're done too 'cause you're gonna be
putting down probably a wood floor or something under this. So we usually, when we're done with this, we take the base board off, and we vacuum under there real good before we put down our
underlayment and our wood floor. Or if you're going to tile as well. So, what happens if they glue it down? Some installers glue these
down, so what do you do then? Well, you can still probably
break that seal of the glue, and that's also where
using my other tool here comes in handy, my
little five-in-one here. So let's say there was
glue underneath this guy. Well, see how he's wide, and
he just goes right under it, and if there was any glue there,
you would get rid of that. This is how you do it the correct way. So if you notice when I shared
you my tools before here, what didn't I show you? I didn't show you this, the
flathead screwdriver, why? 'Cause you shouldn't be using it. Unfortunately, a lot of our
weekend warrior friends, this is all they have. They don't have one of these. And I'm telling you right now if you don't own one of these,
get yourself one of these. 'Cause this is not the
correct way to do this. There's two reasons why. Number one, if you're
using the screwdriver, the only place you're
gonna be able to get into is in the middle in between two nails. There's that lovely thunder again. So with the screwdriver
if you were to come in here like this, what are you gonna do? All I can do is do this. Oh look at that, I just broke the thing. So this is why this is
the incorrect method. This is not the proper
tool to use for this. Also, if you look at the
head of the screwdriver here, he's really tiny and narrow, and all he's gonna do is
shear right through the wood. Whereas this guy here is nice and wide, and he will not shear through the wood. You just tap in, and he lifts up. Go to the next one. Tap in, lift up. And the idea like I said is
to just keep it in one piece. And then you can bust them all up later when you're putting them into the trash. Now, I'm not wearing gloves right now 'cause I'm just showing
you how to do this, but I always wear gloves when I do this just 'cause of the little nails on here, and when I'm breaking them afterwards. So it's a really good
idea to have gloves on. And if you have a lot of old, bad dirt or mold or anything under here, you might wanna have a mask
on or maybe even eyewear, you know, it all depends on how sensitive you are to that sort of thing. So, you can see how quick, we can go right down the line. We can probably have this
whole room done in 20 minutes. We're good. But if you're using the
wrong tool like this, you're gonna be at it for quite some time. Other tools that you don't wanna use are like the butter knives, you know, the little paint back
buttering knives and stuff. They're too thin. Anything that's not
thick and rigid like this you don't wanna be using in this. The idea is you wanna
use overpowering forces to overcome the force of the nail that's holding this thing down. Okay, now I wanted to
show you a situation here you might run into on it. This nail here, let's say
I'm going to pry this up and the nail head just breaks off. And you're just left
with a post under there. So let's just say for argument's sake that this head broke off. What would you do? How would you get that out? There's two things that we do. We'll continue to pound
it down with a hammer. That doesn't always work. So, in those rare situations
where that doesn't help, we'll come in with an angle grinder, my little $30 angle grinder, and just go (imitates
mechanical whirring). It takes one second. You just plug it in, turn it on, touch it to it, and you're done. And that's how we get
rid of that situation. Okay, so I wanted to give
you another example here. This is bad example number two
of another tool not to use. So this is a taping knife, and I've seen people try to
do this with a one-inch knife. This is, I think this
is a four-inch knife. And the reason why this
isn't gonna work is you can stick it in there in between two of these things, but look. See, it just bends too much, and you can tell that the
wood is gonna try to break. It wants to break. But you're not getting
any upward force here because this metal is too thin. It's just bending. So all of the force that
you're wasting your energy on right now is going in to bending that and not lifting this up. I would have better
luck with a five-in-one, but it's just gonna break it, see? So that's why we say we
always use this tool. It goes in like that. It goes in like that. Goes in like that. And the whole thing comes up in one piece. And we got lucky with this one. All of the nails came up with this one. This was a rare occurrence. It's like the holy grail
of carpet tack strips. Okay, so now we've got the tack strips up. I always come in with the flat
edge of the demo bar here, and I always scrape along the wall here to find where my nails are. Like, oh there's one. 'Cause you'll make such
a little mess down here that you won't always see the nails. They're not that obvious. So found one here, and I
just get it up like that. So pretty much this is
really the only tool I need, this and the hammer. Now we have our gloves on, and we're ready to go ahead
and deal with the trash here. What I usually do is I just
break them in half like that. And maybe again in thirds. It makes it more manageable, and then it goes right
into the trash here. And I always use contractor bags. See, these are much thicker bags. I never, ever, ever use garbage bags, so you always wanna make
sure you use contractor bags. And you always wanna make
sure it says three mil, so when I buy these things
I look at the box here. And you can see it says
right there three mil. 'Cause if you're not getting three mil, you're not getting contractor bags. They're scamming you. I've seen other bags before before that say like 1 1/2 mil or 1.75 mil. Those aren't contractor bags. They're trash bags, and
they're gonna be useless. These are nice and thick,
and even once in a while, we'll still have a problem
with one of these too. So this is the thickest bag you can get at your big box stores. So these are the ones to use. So anyway, that's our video for today. I hope you liked it. And don't forget to
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