One of my favorite phases of flipping a home is the demolition phase. Instead of hiring out a crew to rip out flooring and tear down walls in my family we do it ourselves.
Today I took a quick trip over to the house to join my mom in ripping out the old carpet. If you've been following along, you've already seen the horrendous carpet that covers just about every floor in the house besides the kitchen, bathrooms, and hallway.
The process of removing carpet is actually fairly simple. The first step is to remove the threshold in the doorway that's in place when transitioning from one flooring to another, in our case hardwood to carpet. Then, we can begin to rip the carpet up from the tack strips that line the room. Because the condition of the carpet was so poor, the carpet came up quite easily and we were able to cut it down into smaller pieces to roll up and take to the Waste and Recycling Center.
Under the carpet was some pretty nasty carpet padding that literally fell apart in your hands. After removing that as well, we were pleasantly surprised to find beautiful hardwood floors that had never been refinished. This means we can preserve the wood by simply sanding off the top layer of the floor and applying a new stain and top coat, giving the old floors a brand-new look.
The final step was to remove the tack strips and pry the staples from the ground that were holding the carpet padding in place. Once we had finished that, we gave the rooms a thorough sweep and voila— it was already starting to look like a new place! It's amazing how hardwood floors reflect so much light causing the space light up.
In a couple of hours, we were able to knock out three rooms (bedrooms I & II, living, and dining room), but we still have one room left to go. This weekend we will finish removing the carpet from the den, and then we will officially be carpet free.
Stay tuned for a video tour of the house post carpet removal next week!
Commentaires