Sweat Equity: Removing Old Carpet Yourself Saturday, April 12th, 2008
We bought a house with some flaws, and one of them was this shag carpet complete with old pet stains. Before we can install our desired hardwood flooring, we had to remove the dirt magnet. After asking around, the price for professional carpet removal is about $0.35 per square foot. For the 1,500 sf of carpet we had, that’s a potential cost of over $500. Armed with the knowledge and help of our father-in-law, we set forth to do it ourselves.
There are a plenty of online tutorials on how to remove your old carpet (one, two, three), but in general it’s pretty straightforward:
- Remove all furniture.
- Pull up carpet, cut into strips, roll up, remove.
- Repeat #2 with the carpet pad underneath.
- Pry up tackstrips, and tons of nails
- Scrape glue off of subfloor.
- Sweep up remaining crap.
In our house, the pad underneath the carpet was glued down to the concrete subfloor. The original installers were generous (or just lazy) with the glue and squirted it everywhere, so scraping the petrified stuff up took forever. The only new tool we bought was a special scraper blade, for about $10. Otherwise you just need a utility knife, some rope/tape, pliers, and a crowbar.
Was it worth saving $500? My aching back says no, but at least now I know how to remove carpet. Also, occasionally it’s nice to perform some manual labor and feel like you accomplished something tangible. Occasionally.
