Everything I Know About Ripping Up Carpet

Monday I had a snow day off from school, so I decided it was a great time to rip up my hallway carpet. It's a small space, but it felt good to get moving on this giant project, since I'm planning to remove the carpet from all our upstairs floors and paint them white. 

When I first started ripping up our carpet, I was a little scared. I had no idea what I would find under there. I had to use some trial and error to get a good system down, so today I'm sharing with you everything I know about ripping up carpet. It's not much, but it's a start!

First, you're probably going to need a pair of pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and a hammer. A box cutter would also be a great thing to have, if you're working room by room, like me. I'm just cutting off the carpet in each doorway so I don't have to tackle the whole thing at once. 

This picture makes me sad because that was my favorite screwdriver. Just minutes after this picture was taken, I dropped it down the vent. I'll never see it again. 

Pick a corner and start pulling up the carpet and the padding.  You'll probably find these annoying things, called tack strips, along the walls where your carpet was installed, along with some staples. Whoever installed my carpet got a little staple-happy, but fortunately it was just along the walls. 

Use the hammer to wedge the screwdriver under the tack strips and pull them out. I discovered that prying up the strips in spots that were close to the nails in the tack strips worked best. The would pull the nails out and the strips would come up in one piece. No matter how you pull these up, just be careful not to poke yourself or damage your floors with your screwdriver. 

Use the screwdriver and the pliers to pull up any staples. No matter how hard I try, I have always missed a few. Fortunately, I'm painting my floors with a brush, so I'll get plenty more changes to catch anything I've missed. 

This stressed me out a little. These tack strips were underneath the piece of metal that was between the carpet and the new wood floor in the bathroom. I was able to pull them out with the pliers, but I'm going to need fix that gap somehow.

Again, I'm so glad I'm painting this floor!  I originally painted the stairs for this reason-the stairs were all sorts of mismatched wood. This strip at the edge of the stairs is a completely different type of wood and it's going in a different direction. Trying to match stains would be a pain, but when I'm done, it will all be white.

The floor was so dirty! I swept and swept, but it still needs mopped, just so we can live with it until I get around to painting.  Someone was not very careful with drop cloths in the past, so there's another good reason to paint the floor. Soon, I hope to paint this floor just like the bedroom floor. Maybe it will brighten up this sad little hallway!

Still to do in this hallway:

+ Caulk along the edge of the floor and any gaps in the floor.
+ Fill the nail holes and any flaws in the floor with wood filler.
+ Spray paint the vent cover. Maybe black?
+ Repaint the hallway trim (BM Simply White) and hallway walls (BM Moonlight White).
+ Sand the floor, then check for any holes I missed the first time around.
+ Apply two coats of primer.
+ Apply three coats of floor paint in Simply White.
+ Sand away the painted runner on the stairs, and prime and paint the stairs Simply White.
+ Do something to give this hallway some oomph! Maybe a great light fixture or a black wall or just something to make it special. We'll see.