Tearing Up Old Carpet

Pull up a few feet of carpet and fold it over.

Tearing up old carpet.

Pull back the carpeting until the entire rug can be rolled up removed from your home and placed in a dumpster. Use pliers to grab the carpet and pull it away from the subfloor. If you reveal a carpet padding beneath keep it in place for now we ll tackle that later on. Use a utility knife or carpet knife to slice the carpet into manageable strips and roll the strips up as you go.

One way to do this is to lift the carpet away from the floor as you cut. After you ve rolled up the old carpeting and removed it from the room you ll finally get a good look at the subfloor and any surprise damage that the carpet may have been hiding. Pull up and dispose of the foam padding. Just grab the carpet with pliers and pull.

If you are trying to salvage the floor underneath make sure you do not cut grooves in the floor with the knife. Then grab the carpet by hand and continue to pull it up along an entire wall. Carpet removal costs 1 to 1 50 per square foot including labor cleanup and waste disposal. Go to a corner of your carpeting and run a standard screwdriver between the edge of the wall and carpet.

Roll up the strips and tape them for easy handling. Use a utility knife with a sharp new blade to cut through the carpet backing. To detach the carpet from the tack strip that holds the carpet in place along walls start in a corner. Continue pulling up carpet a few feet at a time and cutting it into easy to handle strips.

This equals 48 to 72 per hour because it usually takes 3 hours to remove carpet from a 12 by 12 foot room including extracting the tack strips and staples. Keep both hands on the knife to avoid cutting a free hand. Pry up the carpet from the tacking strips underneath. Continue pulling until you ve separated the carpet entirely from one wall.

Fold the carpet over for easy cutting and slice it into narrow strips.