How To: Remove Carpet from Hardwood Floors

Today I got my keys! After work I went over to my house (note it is no longer "the property", it's MINE) to get started on some work. Sara, Adam, and Stephen were all coming by later to check out the new digs, but I had an hour to kill before they showed up. So I decided I'd go to town on the bush that's growing out of control and blocking the front door and the tree branches that hang really low over the driveway and scrape my roof when I pull in.

The ridiculous, overgrow Front Door Bush, which blocks my breakfast nook window and, more importantly, the path to my front door (this picture is actually a month old, so it was worse today):
So I got all ready to be handy and do dirty work, grabbed the super hedge cutters I borrowed from Adam, and attempted to go to town on the bush ("that's what she said..."). But the bush was stronger than me and the dull, dull, dull shears I had borrowed. Any branch that was the size of my pinky was impossible to cut! So I did what I could until Sara could arrive with reinforcements.

My friend - and now neighbor! - Matt scooted by (literally) during a break from working on refinishing his cabinets to come see my new house and while I was giving him the tour Stephen showed up and Sara and her boyfriend Jason shortly after. After commenting that he'd build a mini-ramp in my backyard because it's so trashed, Matt left to get back to his work and the rest of us got busy pulling up the carpet in my living room to get to the hardwood (after Sara took care of my bush problems).

My living room before.

How To Remove the Carpet
I've been dreading the moment of pulling up my carpet and getting to the middle only to find a huge stain. So we start pulling up the carpet. It's pretty easy, all you need are gloves, needle nose pliers, some sort of crowbar or lever and a hammer. And something to put all the carpet staples in. We grabbed a loose corner and started peeling back the carpet and the layer of padding between it and the hardwood. Luckily they hadn't gone crazy also using glue to adhere the carpet padding to the floor. I was worried about that.

After we got the carpet pulled up and shoved to one end of the room, Sara and Steve started removing the border the carpet had been tacked to by using the crow bar to pry underneath and then lift it up (the border is attached by short nails that pull out of the hardwood floors pretty easy). While they did that, Jason used the pliers to pull the hundreds of staples that had been used to attach the padding to the floor.

Meanwhile, I gave a tour of my house to Adam, Kara, Erika and Jerry who had all shown up when we had about half of the carpet pulled up. By the time I was done giving the tour (I'll have a picture tour for you tomorrow), they had all the carpet up and most the border removed. Man, this home improvement stuff is easy! (just kidding - THANK YOU guys for being such awesome cheap labor!)

Sara and Jason left after about 2.5 hours. We were probably 80% done by then. Stepehn and I finished removing the last of the staples, rolled the carpet into the corner, and swept up the floor. My floors turned out to be in pretty great condition! There are some water stains here and there, but ain't no thang. I don't feel like sanding and refinishing, but I might just refinish. I need to research this process. First I just want to clean them with, as Steve kept saying, Murphy's, and see how they clean up.

Stephen showing off our handy work and playing a little broom guitar.

The one bummer is that the alcove of my living room (you can see it on the right in the before picture) turned out to be an add on. It doesn't have hardwood, just plywood =( So for now I think my "solution" will have to be to get a piece of reminant carpet that doesn't want to make me throw up like the current carpet, and leave that area covered and put a transition tack down. Right now the original carpet is there; we cut it and left it in place while we pulled up the rest of the room. I'd love to put in wood, but I just don't think I can afford that right now.

After toasting our work with a cupcake nightcap with the delicious Eclipse Chocolat cupcakes Erika and Jerry brought me, Stephen and I called it a night around 10:30.

Tomorrow: sanding, priming and painting doors and trim while I continue to ponder what color to pain the living room.