How do I pull up a carpet without messing up the floor?

Answer 1

You may find that the carpeting is rubber backed and the backing will stick to the floor due to moisture and heavy traffic. If it has a pad under the carpet (seperate) the carpet should come up easily. I have seen lots of scraping done to remove rubber backing from floors. The best starting spot is a corner. There may be carpet tack strips holding it down. Good luck.

Answer 2

I removed 3 rooms of regular carpet from a beautiful maple floor, and in the process had to take out miles of staples that held down the rubber pad throughout. I found the best thing was a large blunt end pliers, like a heavy wire cutter that I laid on its side to carefully lift the brass staples so they dont cut your feet later. The pad left a lot of rubber film that I had to gradually scrub off with an orange oil cleaner. It took time.

And to remove the carpet easily, first I had to get all the baseboards up (label and save them) and used a utility knife to cut the old carpet into manageable pieces to toss out. The previous owner had been a cigar smoker so I was glad to get that smell out of the house.

The rest of the house (kitchen, dining room and family room) had that awful paisley indoor outdoor carpet that is rubber backed (black rubber) glued to the floor. I thought how many hours that would be to scrape that up, and decided to put ceramic tile over that. So, I got underlayment and read how to do it, by not butting each piece up close against the other, nailing every 4-6 inches, and then much later tiled on top of that. It turned out gorgeous, even tho it meant living with 3 different levels of flooring as it was in process. Door sills that abutted the remaining rooms had to have a transition piece screwed down and this helped to keep the tile from chipping, and to make a gradual transition to the bare wood floors elsewhere.

Good luck! It was a worthwhile, but time consuming venture.