Removing Glued-Down Carpet
Discover a hassle-free way to efficiently remove glued-down carpet using C-clamps.
Our crew had to remove a large wall-to-wall carpet from a room that we were remodeling. The carpet was in pretty good condition, and as is often the case, one of us wanted to take it home for use in his basement. The carpet was glued to the floor, and pulling it up involved a considerable amount of awkward prying and tugging. Even with gloves on, we had a hard time getting a grip on this carpet. If we were going to toss the carpet, it would have been easy just to cut it up into narrow strips with a utility knife. We had to figure out how to remove carpet padding that is glued down using another approach.
I hunted around in my toolbox for something that might help, and I found three C-clamps — one for each of us. We folded the edge of the carpet to form a double layer and tightened the clamps onto the thickened edge. The clamps gave each of us a great handle on the situation. Pulling together, the carpet came up like a breeze; we didn’t even break a sweat.
— Eric Roth, Minden, None
From Fine Homebuilding #141
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In case the clamps are slipping off the carpet - as an additional measure you can add a short dowel or cut a 1x board narrow, close to 1x1, and put that in the fold with the clamp behind it. The clamp will bump into that lump inside the carpet fold and stop there.
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