If you have a home that’s a few decades old and has had multiple owners then there’s a pretty good chance that you have at least one or two rooms that have hardwood floors that have been covered with wall-to-wall carpeting by previous owners trying to save some money on flooring costs. Wall-to-wall carpets are also used a lot in basements to warm up the cold cement floor. As part of my ongoing basement remodeling project I had to remove the tackstrips and carpet staples from the one semi-finished room I’m working on. If you’ve ever tried or had to remove wall-to-wall carpeting as part of any home renovation project you know some of the horrors and tediousness of removing tackstrips and staples from floors.

Just use a small crowbar to pry most tackstrips from the floor.

When wall-to-wall carpet is installed it is usually held in place with wooden strips of thick tacks along the edges of most rooms. These pieces of wood are called “tackstrips” because they are essentially rows of hundreds of little tacks sticking straight up. Carpet is installed by pushing and pulling the carpet over these little tacks which then hold the carpet in place with hundreds of these little teeth. A tackstrip looks a lot like a long, tiny bed of nails. Most wall-to-wall carpets are laid down on top of some sort of foam carpet padding which is often held in place with multiple (in some cases, hundreds) of flooring staples slammed down throughout the middle of the floor.

Step 1 - Remove the Carpeting and Padding

Removing the carpet and even the padding is usually a pretty straight-forward task. This can be a messy, and even dangerous, job if you’re not careful, so wear gloves, long pants, safety shoes and goggles if you can. Old carpets can have mold, mildew and lots of dirt and dust in them, so you may also want to try to have proper ventilation or open windows when you are ripping up carpets.

The best way I’ve seen to start ripping up carpeting is to use a pair of pliers and just get a good grip on a little chunk of carpet in the corner of a room and start pulling up. Once you get corner pulled up, you can usually go around the room and manually pull the carpet off the tackstrips that surround the room. If you have a lot of carpeting you’ll want to use a razor or carpet cutting tool to slice the carpet into strips which can be rolled up and taken out of the room easily. Even cheap carpet can get quite heavy. Removing the carpet padding is also a brute force sort of job where you simply reach down and start yanking the foam up. That’s when you’ll start finding where the foam is held to the floor with all those flooring staples.

Step 2 - Removing the Tackstrip

Once the carpet and foam is up the real fun of removing the tackstrips begins. You’ll generally only need a few tools for this job. I have done it a couple times and I’ve found that I really only used a hammer, a small pry bar (really, 8 inches at the most), a large flat head screwdriver and maybe a pair of pliers or vice-grips.

To remove the tackstrips you want to pick a spot to start and just start prying them up off the floor. If you’re working on a hardwood floor and don’t want to damage the wood anymore than it’s already damaged by the stips you might want to put a piece of thin wood under the pry bar to make sure you are leveraging into the floor and leaving dents. You can use the hammer to tap the pry bar under tight tackstrips. If it’s a really tight fit you might want to consider using a thin piece of metal like a utility knife to get started with the prying.

Just go around the room, inching in one direction or another, inserting pry bar, prying up, moving a few inches and doing it all over again. Tackstrips are usually anywhere between two to four feet long, but they are placed end to end so you may not immediately see the ends. A big pry bar is actually harder to work with in this case. I have a little six inch pry bar or “wonder bar” that I use on most projects like this (including removing baseboard molding) and I find it easier to maneuver and fit into tight spaces than a larger pry bar. It was the same one I used when I removed my old wooden baseboards.

As you slowly move along prying up the tackstrip one of two things will happen: either the strips will come up fairly easily and they’ll bring the nail with it or they’re crack and crumble every couple inches, leaving the nail in the floor. In my experience older tackstrips or those that have been driven into concrete will tend to crumble and leave a nail behind. Newer tackstrips or those going straight into wood floors will often pry up a little easier. If you’re leaving nails behind you’ll want to yank them out with either a hammer (watch those soft wood floors) or with those vice grips or pliers. Some people advocate simple cutting the tops of the nails off with a Dremel or other cutting tool, but I’d only suggest that if you’re working with concrete and don’t want to leave nail craters in the cement floor. It’s just easier to pull nails out of wood than to cut them.

I usually use an old box or a plastic container of some sort for all the tackstrip debris. I also tend to carefully break the tackstrips into smaller sections while I’m working because it’s easier to handle a 1 foot long wooden strip filled with rusty nails than it is to handle a 4 foot long wooden strip filled with rusty nails.

It’s a tedious job, but also a fairly dangerous one because you’re almost always handling these little shards of splintery wood that are covered with hundreds of sharp, rusty little metal barbs. I always wear thick leather gloves and I always take my time. While you’re moving around the room you’ll want to be careful about kneeling or sitting on those staples in the floor and you’ll want to probably clean up as you move around, sweeping up any splinters or nails after removing a couple feet of tackstrips.

Step 3 - Remove the Carpet Padding Staples

Now, for all those staples that were holding on the carpet foam you have a couple choices. You can use a flat screwdriver and try prying them out one by one. I personally like using a pair of pliers and just reaching down, grabbing and yanking upwards and dropping them in one hand. I’ve heard of people using sanders and scrapers and all sorts of tools and gadgets to remove staples quickly, but I personally like doing it by hand because I think I do less damage to the floors that way.

You can quickly get into a rhythm if you have a large room. I usually hold a metal can in my left hand and a pair of pliers in my right hand. I just reach down with the pliers, pull the staple straight out of the wood and then plunk it in the can. Repeat this about 100 times.

Step 4 - Cleanup and More Cleanup

The real trick with removing staples and tackstrips is making sure you get everything and don’t leave any little nails or staples behind to surprise you later. One trick I’ve found: use a bright round flashlight and slowly roll it around in an arc on the floor. The bright light will shine over the floor and any staple or nail you missed will cast a large elongated shadow! I’ve used this little flashlight trick for finding all sorts of tiny screws and nuts that I’ve accidentally dropped onto hard floors.

You’ll also want to be sure to use a broom and sweep up every single nook and cranny very well. No matter how careful you are with staple and tackstrip debris, it’s nearly impossible to get everything on the first run through a room. You might find staples you missed or sweep up some shards and splinters of tackstrip you didn’t know existed. Besides sweeping you might even want to use a slightly damp mop to just go around and get up some of the dust, dirt and grime that’s been left under the carpets for all those years before you leave the job site for the day.

Step 5 - Repair and Prep

The nails from the tackstripping and the staples from the carpet padding have obviously left holes and divots in your floors. Depending upon what they’re made of you might have a few different scenarios. If you were pulling these tackstripping and nails and staples from cement you might have actual craters where the cement chipped or came out with the nails. If you are working on a wood floor you may still have some small divots, holes and dents.

For cement craters you’ll probably just want to take the time to quickly patch them up before moving on to the new flooring. For wooden floors that are going to be screened or sanded you can pretty much ignore anything small. When the floors are refinished those little holes will be filled with sawdust or finish and probably won’t show much. If you are worried about being able to see the holes you can try filling them with some wood putty that’s meant to be stained, but I haven’t had a lot of good luck with those myself. Some people love them.

Really, your final repair and prep will depend more upon what you’re planning to do with the floors than what you might have now. Even if you’re planning on putting down carpet all over again, you generally want to remove the old carpet padding staples and tackstrips before putting down the new.

Remember to be safe! This is a relatively simple project, but it’s also a pretty dangerous one due to the fact that you’re working with sharp tacks and brittle wood strips. Play it safe and always wear thick leather gloves and safety goggles when you’re ripping up carpet tackstrips and staples. Your hands and eyes will thank you for it later.