Another geeky home improvement question involving wall-to-wall carpeting

Factual Questions
1

So, I’m buying this house that has hardwood floors just about everywhere, but for some godforsaken reason, the previous owner felt compelled to cover them up in the living room, dining room and stairs/upstairs hall with wall-to-wall carpeting.

I’ve pulled the carpet back a bit in the living room and dining room in order to assess the condition of the floors, and they look fine. I intend to rip the carpet up in those rooms as soon as I move in.

My problem is the stairs. This carpet job was obviously professionally done, and quite well. I can’t get a single corner or edge loose enough to peek underneath and see what the stairs look like. Can someone tell me how wall-to-wall carpet is installed on stairs, and what the best way is to go about unattaching a corner or edge without boogering the whole thing up? If the stairs look like they’re in poor condition, I want to be able to put the carpet back in place and leave it, so that eliminates the possibility of just hacking at it with a utility knife.

Any suggestions?

2

Yeah–leave the carpet alone. Hardwood floors are IMO vastly overrated. We pulled up a corner of our living/dining room carpet to discover “hardwood” flooring, ripped out all the carpet, and have regretted it ever since.

Hardwood floors have to be DUSTED, for heaven’s sakes. Frequently. Nobody told me that.

Carpeting, OTOH, soaks up the dust and assorted smaller varieties of crumbs, crud, etc., and only has to be vacuummed “every so often”, instead of “AGAIN??”

To get a peek at what’s under your stair carpeting, the bottom edge is your best bet. The stair carpeting is usually in a big chunk, like a stair runner. So you can pry up the bottom edge (use a needlenose pliers or something to pull out the staples).

Beautifully polished and shiny hardwood stairs are dangerously slippery to children’s stocking feet, necessitating some kind of friction safety strip glued along each edge, or a fabric stair runner.

3

Well, Duck Duck Goose, this weekend on C-Span they had a book review that you may be interested in. Go here. Perhaps you could check it out at your local library.

She told of the tremendous amounts of dust that are captured in carpets. A certain amount of it remains even after having the carpet is cleaned. Then there are the little critters that live off the dust. Yuck!

My point is that if you read this book, perhaps you will have a different attitude the next time you get out the dust mop. :slight_smile:

4

Carpets are either nailed or glued down into place. If your carpet was nailed down, there should be some places where you should be able to pull it up and expose the tackstrip nails that help hold it in place.

If you can’t budge the carpet at all, then it might have been glued down. Glued-down carpet can be a major bitch to remove, requiring great patience and strength and a good scraping tool. There are also chemicals that work by weakening the adhesive.

That you haven’t been able to expose any nails or tackstrip makes me think that your carpet was glued down. However, it sounds like the rest of the carpet in the house wasn’t glued down. And also, I don’t know if it’s common practice to use glue on carpets on stairs. (I’d ask my carpet-installer father, but he’s 90% asleep at the moment.)

I’d call in a professional to come take a look at it. (But then again, I’m kinda wussy that way.)

If you do pull up the carpet and then decide you don’t like floors under the stairs, please have a professional re-secure the carpeting to the floors. Nothing screams danger like improperly secured carpet on stairs.

5

Eh, thanx, Kniz, but frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn about things I can’t see. :smiley:

6

The only place that I’ve been able to find that’s even remotely loose is the edge of the very first step (there are 2 steps up to a landing, then a 90 degree turn to the rest of the stairs). I can pull the carpet about a 1/2" to the side, but no further. I don’t see a tack strip there, and no glue either. Would the carpet have tack strips on the stairs, or would it just be nailed/tacked into the risers and under the lip of the stair?

If it is, in fact, glued…can I assume that the finish on the stairs underneath is ruined? I don’t want to get involved in taking the carpet off if I’m actually going to have to refinish the wood. :frowning:

7

Some stairs aren’t very pretty underneath. Did you think about that? They might just be regular boards. Also, if you make them just wood, they can be really slippery! Do you want that? Plus noisy too.

I have wood floors I just put a rug on them to capture the dust.

8

What DDG said.

When my SO moved into her house they had to pull up the carpeting because of stains and odor. It was really bad. The previous owner was very old and didn’t take care of things, and basically let the carpet go to hell.

The floors have to be swept every day because of the animal hair and crumbs and stuff.

As soon as funds are available, we’re getting new carpeting.

9

I know that those of you who are advising me to reconsider the hardwood floor issue are just trying to help, but I’ve lived with hardwood floors all of my life. I know they show more dust than carpet. I know they can be slippery. I know.

I don’t like wall-to-wall. All I want to know is how to get it off enough (without destroying it) to check out the condition of the woodwork underneath, and how to re-attach it if they appear to be in bad condition. I have no reason to think that they’re unfinished, since the woodwork and hardwood floors throughout the rest of the house are perfect. The wall-to-wall appears to be something that a previous owner installed after the fact (the house was built in the 1920’s) just for their own preference, not because of the wood being in poor condition (based on my experiences elsewhere in the house).

AudreyK…any advice from your Dad? :slight_smile:

10

If the hardwood floors were original with the house, I think chances are fairly good that at least the stair treads will be finished hardwood as well. The risers may have been painted. If so, it may not be worth the hassle of stripping and refinishing them, especially if they were painted with lead-based paint. I suspect the cove molding that is typically installed between the riser and tread will be gone as well.

If you can pull on the carpet and it pulls away from the treads even a little bit, it’s probably been nailed and not glued. Check if there are any nail heads hiding at the top of each tread. If not, try to feel if there is a tack strip that the carpet has been stretched over.

If there is a tack strip, rent or buy a carpet stretcher. It has gripers that grab the carpet, and a pad that you bang your knee into to stretch the carpet. What you’re trying to do is stretch the carpet just enough that it will pull off the tack strip.

If there are nails, use a cat’s paw (like a tiny crowbar) to remove the nails. You should be able to do this without damaging the floor, since the carpet will provide a bit of a buffer.

If it’s been glued down, I can’t offer any suggestions other than cutting the carpet off, scraping off the glue, and refinishing the stairs.

11

He came home a few minutes ago, and I just got done talking with him. :slight_smile:

It’s very, very unlikely that the carpet on the stairs is glued down. The reason for this is that you wouldn’t have to use glue-- the wood’s great for nailing stuff into.

There’s probably tackstrip holding the carpet in place. But because it’s stairs (and loose carpet on stairs = AUUUGGGHH!!), there’s going to be a lot of it. Hence the difficulty you’ve found in prying up the carpet.

The tackstrip is most likely located along the back, across the step (the tread) and along the bottom part of the riser. (There might also be some along the sides of the tread.) The tacks on the tackstrip on the tread and riser are set so the nails on each are basically pointing at each other-- this helps give it a good, secure hold on the carpet (again, loose carpet on stairs = AUUUGGGHH!!).

Your best bet in removing the carpet is to pull up what you can, and then use pliers to pull the rest up. (I have a feeling this is easier said than done!) Start from the bottom and work your way up.

Manual carpet stretchers, btw, are murder on the knees. They’re the main reason carpet installers walk funny and with discomfort/pain. Leave that tool to the masochistic.

With luck, the wood flooring under the carpet is in good condition. If anything, you might have to buy wood-colored putty or something to plug the holes left by the tackstrip nails.

If the wood’s not in good condition, and you decide you’d rather have the carpet, I repeat that you should have a professional come in and re-secure it. (One last time! Loose carpet on stairs = AUUUGGGHH!!)

Good luck, and have fun. Oh, and congrats on your new home, Jadis. :slight_smile:

12

Thanks, AudreyK…and thank AudreyDad for me as well. :slight_smile:

BTW…anyone interested in seeing pictures of the new house (shameless self-promotion!!) can go here. It’s just a directory of files, not a real webpage…I’ve been too lazy to learn how to set one up. :smiley:

Thanks again for everyone’s help!