New Carpet, and how to prepare for it

So as part of our preparing to move we wanted to get new carpet.  The stuff the came with the house was nasty and dirty, and Dallin had grabbed a hold of a few strings of it and pulled, leaving nice long lines of no carpet.

After a bit of a search we went with Home Depot who had a good deal on Stainmaster carpet, plus $150 or so installation for the whole house.  Long story short… it took them 3 weeks to get it installed.  This was the final thing we had to get done before putting the house on the market, and so it delayed our plans by 3 weeks.  But we had a LOT of junk to declutter from our house, so it was probably a good thing in the end.

So the night before they come to install we start ripping out the carpet.  I Google on how to remove carpet staples and get lots of talk about needle-nose pliers being the best.  So that’s what Kaylene and I do… for 6 hours.  12 man/woman hours of staple pulling.  Blisters, sore knees, all the fun that comes with it.

We leave one patch of carpet under the TV stand so Dallin could watch TV while we waited for them to come (sometimes between 12:01 AM and midnight).  When they get here we move the stand, pull up the carpet and I kneel down with my pliers to start pulling the 5 or so staples out.

Then the carpet installer guy says “I can get those”, and busts out a scraper and takes care of all 5 staples in about 2 seconds.  He then goes around the whole room in about 2 minutes.  The room we had spend 2 man/woman hours the night before meticulously pulling out staples.  I was dumbfounded.

I don’t know why Google failed me, but here it is for Google to index.

When removing flooring staples DO NOT USE pliers.  Go get you a floor scraper and be done in a fraction of the time, and with less body aches and blisters.  Let me say this again in a few different ways to make sure Google gets it.

To remove floor staples don’t use needle nose pliers.  Go rent a scraper from Home Depot.

Get a scraper to remove carpet pad staples.

When removing staples from carpet or padding, use a scraper to save yourself some pain and heartache.

Hopefully someone will find this post and save themselves some effort.