This past weekend we had an open house for our home that was recently put on the market. There were quite a few people that stopped and most of them did not realize how large the house was because from outside the house does not look like it is as large as it is.

Nearly everyone that stopped by had the same thing to say about the house. The carpet in the living room, dining room, and the stairs were not attractive as carpet in general is not in style anymore. After speaking with my parents, they put me in charge of getting the carpet removed. I put a call into my handyman and he was not available until Thursday or Friday at the earliest. Since I am going out of town this weekend, I did not want to wait until I got back in order to get the carpet removed.

This morning after my morning run, I was getting ready to shower and instead of showering I decided to head to Home Depot in order to get the supplies to pull up the carpet myself. I am by no means a handyman and I am not the biggest fan of work like this, but I knew that I would be able to knock it out or come close to finishing it today.

At Home Depot I got a few key items to help assist the removal of the carpet. The items I purchased from Home Depot included:

• Locking Pliers
• Flat Head Screwdriver
• Knee Pads
• Linesman Pliers
• Floor Scraper
• Utility Knife

I had a few other tools at the house that helped me complete this task like a hammer, pry bar, and vacuum.

Here are the before pictures of the two rooms and the stairs

Living Room

Dining Room

Stairs

The first task to take off the layer of carpet. I started in the living room since it is the room with the most carpet in it. There was one corner that was easier than the others to start from in order to pull it off. I took the locking pliers and attached it to corner of the carpet and pulled it back a few feet. Next, I took the utility knife and cut a straight line along the carpet. I rolled the carpet up and then repeated the process.

After getting the carpet all pulled I pulled up the pad that was under the carpet but above the concrete floor. The pad was easier to pull off than the layer of carpet, but the edges and other parts of the pad throughout were glued down. It was extremely difficult to get the pad that was glued down had it not been for the floor scraper. This tool was extremely loud, but worked like a charm to get the pad and glue off of the concrete. Once the pad was all pulled up I put it into 33 gallon trash bags.

When carpet is laid down, tack strips are placed down and hammered into the ground. Getting these up is not the easiest of tasks and the pry bars were not that helpful in getting the tack strips up. Once again though, the floor scraper came in handy and made quick work of getting up the tack strips. I threw the wooden tack strips away once I got them unhinged.

I repeated these steps for the dining room and with the shortcuts I learned in the living room it made the dining room get completed much faster.

The stairs were another story and were extremely difficult. Each stair had to have the carpet removed one step at a time. I had to use the locking pliers multiple times for each step as they were stapled in with at least twenty staples per step. Tomorrow the task is going to be getting the tack strips and staples out of the stairs.

Here is what the finished product looks like of the living room and dining room plus the nearly complete stairs.

Living Room

Dining Room

Stairs