Do you have old carpeting in your home that you want to remove, but need to refinish the beautiful hardwood underneath it? If so, there will be some prep work that you need to do to make the job of refinishing your floors much easier. Here are some tips to follow when doing the prep on your own.
Roll Up Carpeting
You may be tempted to grab the carpet from a corner of the room and rip it right off. Unfortunately, this is not the best way to go about doing it. You'll be better off using a razor blade to cut the carpeting into small strips that can be rolled up and easily lifted. Your city most likely has rules for how big these rolls of carpet can be for them to be picked up on garbage day, so be sure to do your research before you start cutting up the carpet.
Remove Tack Strips
There are likely some tack strips that surround the room that need to be removed. Be careful when praying these tack strips off the floor with a pry bar, because you want to cause as little damage as possible. If there are large nails that have left big holes in your hardwood, you'll need to fix the floor prior to having it refinished. You can buy some wood filler that will go into the hole and dry, and then change color according to what stain you use.
Remove All Nails
If nails were used in places to hold down your carpet, they may still be in the floor after you roll up the carpet. You'll need to remove all of these nails, since they can cause a lot of damage to the sanding equipment that is brought in for hardwood refinishing. Be prepared to start pulling up individual nails with pliers to get rid of them all. The toughest place to remove the nails from will be the stairs, since nails are often used to secure the carpeting tightly to the curves of each stair. Hopefully, someone didn't go overboard with the nails when they installed the carpeting.
Remove Sticky Residue
Glue may have been used to secure the carpet pad to the floor, and that glue will need to be removed as well. You can use a product like Goo Gone to help get rid of all the excess glue still on the floor. Once again, this can damage the sanding equipment if left on the floor.
With the carpet removed and the floor prepped, you'll be ready to have the underlying wood refinished
After tearing out all of the old carpet from our home, I realized that we needed something a little better. I began looking around at alternatives, and I found a really nice laminate that worked well with our budget and that looked really nice. I talked with the installers about putting it in, and they were more than happy to work with us. Within a few weeks, we had a new floor, and it made all the difference in the world. I decided that it would be fun to start an entire blog about flooring, so read more here if you have questions.