Removing old carpet. how many staples do i have to pull.
This is just a curiosity question now as the deed is already done. I just removed carpet from 2 floors of my house and stairwells. 2nd floor is having hardwood put in. other floor carpet. stairs carpet. I did all the removal. Someone else is doing all the installing.
Basic question is what would the installers have done with all the staples if i'd paid them to do removal too?
1. manually pry them all out which is time consuming?
2. hammer them all down leaving lumps of old foam/carpet and just throw new flooring over top?
3. something else?
So i have discovered that carpet install consists of an rolls underlay padding that is stapled down along all it's edges, and the nail/tack strips around the perimeter of the room. Pulling up carpet and underlay was easy. removing tack strips was ok with a pry bar. But every single staple from the underlay was left. and 80% of them had a piece of the foam stuck under it that had ripped off. I went through and manually pulled every one of those staples. The question is, did i have to? And does the answer change if it's carpet being put back into the room vs hardwood into the room? I could see potentially (although i don't believe it myself) that you wouldn't notice them under new underlay and carpet but i have to assume they must be removed if hardwood is being put in.
Also the stairs were worse. They use staples to actually hold the carpet down on each stair. Especially under the lip of each stair and into the vertical part between stairs. Pulling the carpet off was ok but pieces of carpet were left stuck under nearly all of those staples. To me it seemed like each one of those would have been a lump under the new carpet so i pulled them all. Is that the normal procedure or would it have been fine if they'd just stapled new carpet over it.
And my stairs hang out into the open on one side so the carpet wraps around the end of each stair. They must have used 20 staples on each of these small areas. They were so dense right at the corner that i doubt the new installer would have been able to drive more staples in if i hadn't pried them out.
Appreciate any opinions that people have.
Basic question is what would the installers have done with all the staples if i'd paid them to do removal too?
1. manually pry them all out which is time consuming?
2. hammer them all down leaving lumps of old foam/carpet and just throw new flooring over top?
3. something else?
So i have discovered that carpet install consists of an rolls underlay padding that is stapled down along all it's edges, and the nail/tack strips around the perimeter of the room. Pulling up carpet and underlay was easy. removing tack strips was ok with a pry bar. But every single staple from the underlay was left. and 80% of them had a piece of the foam stuck under it that had ripped off. I went through and manually pulled every one of those staples. The question is, did i have to? And does the answer change if it's carpet being put back into the room vs hardwood into the room? I could see potentially (although i don't believe it myself) that you wouldn't notice them under new underlay and carpet but i have to assume they must be removed if hardwood is being put in.
Also the stairs were worse. They use staples to actually hold the carpet down on each stair. Especially under the lip of each stair and into the vertical part between stairs. Pulling the carpet off was ok but pieces of carpet were left stuck under nearly all of those staples. To me it seemed like each one of those would have been a lump under the new carpet so i pulled them all. Is that the normal procedure or would it have been fine if they'd just stapled new carpet over it.
And my stairs hang out into the open on one side so the carpet wraps around the end of each stair. They must have used 20 staples on each of these small areas. They were so dense right at the corner that i doubt the new installer would have been able to drive more staples in if i hadn't pried them out.
Appreciate any opinions that people have.
Last edited by Kevinck on Sep 26th, 2018 12:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
