This weekend the goal was to tear up the carpeting in the living and dining rooms, and to get started painting the bedrooms.
Turns out it takes way longer to pull up carpets than I anticipated. Over the course of a LONG Saturday and an equally long Sunday, my girlfriend and I got the carpet up from both rooms, though there are still some tacks left in the living room which I will have up tonight.
The actual work is pretty straightforward: find a loose corner of carpet and start pulling. Make sure you're wearing gloves because you might pull up some of the tacks with the carpet.. just be careful as you work around the edges. Rather than pulling up all the carpet in one piece, use a utility blade to cut it into manageable strips.. 4-5 feet wide. Once it's up, roll it up and tape it so it can be disposed of easily.
Under the carpet you will find the padding, which is just foam that rips up easily. The final step is to remove the carpet tacks. This is where you will devote most of your time. Use needle nose pliers, a pry bar, and a hammer to remove each and every tack you can find. In my case, there was also a nail-laden border along the edges of the floor that we pried up using the aforementioned pry bar. I'm not a pro so I have no idea if this is a common way of installing carpet or not.
Tonight the plan is to finish pulling the carpet tacks, clean up that whole mess, and to investigate my fridge, which is not getting very cold. From the research I've done, it seems to need some cleaning underneath or the defrosting mechanism is frozen.
