What is the best way to remove old carpeting?
If your carpeting is beyond cleaning and you have decided to replace it, the old carpeting must come out. Some would leave this for the installers of the new carpet, but some places won’t handle the removal. They leave the job up to you. But if you do it yourself, you can save some money on labor and on installation time for the new carpet. In most cases the removal can be relatively simple. Usually you just need to use a tool to loosen the carpet from one of the corners of the floor. Some use screw drivers or small pry-bars. I like using a pair of pliers to just grip the carpet.
Once you loosen the carpet from the edges of the floor, you can try to roll it up for removal. If that would be too big to handle, you can always get a utility knife and cut up the carpet in to smaller manageable sizes. On a side note, if you have any outdoor pets, a square of old carpet makes for a nice bed. When the carpeting is out, you can do the same process to remove the carpet padding, if any. After the carpet and pad is gone, you have to focus on removing all of the old carpet tacks and nails that may be in your floor. You may also want to pull up the old floor stripping and tack boards the carpeting was attached to. It depends one whether or not you play to have new pieces installed or just reuse the old pieces.The nails are small and don’t always have a head you can grip with a hammer, so you may have to work out some of the nails with a pair of pliers.