Just bought my first home and will be tearing out the nasty pink carpet over the oak floors. I haven't done this before and want to be careful not to damage the wood. The carpet is not an issue, but any suggestions on how to remove the tack strips and leftover pad staples without doing any damage?

Thanks

 

Unfortunately, you already have damage with the nail and staple holes. Use a floor scraper, the kind that looks like a garden hoe that someone straightened out, to scrape along all the pad seams and perimeters. This will remove the pad and many of the staples with it. Since the floor is oak and pretty hard, it's possible the pad staples didn't penetrate as far and may scrape up better. When the pad and dirt you'll likely find under it are gone, use a small flat tip screw driver to pop up the remaining staples and finish pulling them with pliers. Use a rubber mallet and a flat bar to get the tack strip up. I've found that, with older floors like that, the strip often comes out in many small pieces. Your experience may be better. In any case, the flat bar shouldn't do any further damage to the oak and you'll probably want to refinish the floor any how in order to deal with all the staple and nail marks.

 

Thanks. I was planning on needing to sand and refinish anyways, so that won't be a big problem. Thanks for the suggestions on how to get stuff up without gouging things up too bad.

 

You're welcome. Enjoy the project and let us know how it turns out.

 

Job went great. My wife and I were able to get it all done today. Floor looks great... just needs a sand and finish. That's on for tomorrow. Rubber mallet and flat pry bar worked great on the tack strip and actually popped up the staples really easily as well. I just had to use pliers to pull up any staples that broke.

Thanks again