Hi, everyone! It’s Jeff Patterson with Home Repair Tutor,
and today I’m going to share with you how to remove old, worn out carpet from your house. So I’ve got some great tips for you. Before you know it, you’re going to have
a brand new looking room, and you’re going to feel a lot happier about the way that your
house looks. So let’s get started! I’ve got great tips. Stay tuned. All right. What I like to do is start in a corner, obviously. If you can’t pull up the carpet by hand
– like right here, I can’t pull this up by hand – what you can do is cut with both
hands a little notch in the corner, okay? So I can pull up the carpet that way. All right. So the notch allows you to grab it with your
hand. So now you can simply pull back using both
hands. The carpet’s going to be attached to these
tackstrips, and that’s no problem. The carpet will just come right off the tackstrips
when you pull. Pull the carpet back from the wall and into
the center of the room. For this size room, I like to fold the carpet
into thirds. So I fold over one side, then I’ll fold
over the other side. But before I do that, when I fold it into
thirds, I can take my utility knife with both hands and just cut along the fold. And what this will allow me to do is to roll
up the carpet into manageable pieces, okay? Because not all of us are Superman, all right? I know I’m certainly not. And I don’t want to kill my back taking
this down to the street. So roll it up into thirds. And then what you can do is take a piece of
duct tape – I didn’t mean to do that but – you take a piece of duct tape and tape
up the roll. All right. Take this. Set it aside. Fold over the other portion of the carpet
into the center. Cut that fold and repeat the process; do the
same thing. Okay. So what you’re left with is the padding
on the floor. So padding is just tacked down, most likely
with staples. And the staples are only along the perimeter
of the padding. So the cool part about that is all you need
to do – with your fingers – is pull back and remove the padding. And just be careful. You may want to wear gloves because the staples
– if they come up into the padding – can jab your fingers. Although I’m not wearing gloves because
I forgot them. So anyhow, the next step in removing old carpet
is remove the pad. Now the carpet padding is pretty flimsy. You can roll it up easier than the carpet
itself. So what I like to do is fold it up over on
itself – like so – and then use duct tape. After removing the carpet padding, next thing
that you absolutely need to do – especially if you’re going to install hardwood floors
over your wood subfloor here – remove the metal staples. Otherwise, your hardwood floor isn’t going
to sit flush on this wood subfloor. Now if you’re going to put in maybe laminate
with a padding on it or carpet, it’s not that big of a deal. But you definitely want to remove as many
staples as possible, okay? So what I like to do is one of two things. You can use your favorite pliers or snips
to remove all the staples, like so. Or you can use a pry bar, like this, and just
remove all the staples in an orderly fashion. Now if the pry bar has proven to be slow,
you can go back to your snips. All right. So here’s a big tip. Check your subfloor for squeaks like mine. Check this out. All right? So this is squeaky here. If you’re going to install hardwood floors,
carpet, laminate, whatever, you totally want to make sure that this squeak is eliminated. And you can do that by finding the joist,
and that’s indicated by the screws that go through this wood subfloor. So what you want to do is line up a ring shank
nail, tap it in place, secure this wood subfloor more to the joist that’s underneath it,
okay? And do the same thing with every screw that
you see. Just secure either a ring shank nail or a
2” deck screw so that you eliminate that squeak. All gone, right? All gone. So if you’re going to install hardwood floors,
laminate, anything other than carpet, you need to remove these tackstrips. But if you’re going to have carpet down,
just leave them in place. The one caveat to that is you need to inspect
them. If they’re rusted out, like these ones are,
that’s an indicator that maybe you had a roof leak if this is on the second floor or
simply somebody spilled a drink or water and that that’s what caused the rust. In any case, remove all rusted out tackstrips
and replace them with new ones. And all you need to do is take a pry bar like
this one, shove it underneath there, and pry up their nails that hold it in place, okay? You want to find those nails. If the pry bar isn’t going in, help it out,
okay? Help it out. But in any case, you want to find those nails
that are holding it down, slide the pry bar underneath it, and go to town. All right. That’s how you remove carpet from your house. Not too bad. It is a tough job, I’ll be honest with you. The worst part is removing the staples. But I got two tips that’ll help you out
with that part. Number one: if you don’t have knee pads,
use a towel. Put a towel on the subfloor; save your knees. Second tip is use gloves. Don’t be a dummy like me and get blisters. I forgot my gloves for today – big mistake. So use gloves when you’re removing the staples
or the tackstrips. So that’s it for today. Totally check out my website at HomeRepairTutor.com
and sign up for the email newsletter because you’ll get tips every single week that’ll
help you save money and time. So have a great day, and I’ll see you soon!
