Removing Glued Carpet Underlay

When replacing carpet or exposing the hardwood floor that is underneath the carpeting the rubber underlay will require removal.

Removing glued carpet underlay.

Step 1 scraping the carpet glue. Once the carpet has been removed you ll still have to remove the adhesive from the subfloor. Had we realised the floor sander was so effective in removing the underlay we would not have bothered with so much scraping at first. Here are some alternative methods to get carpet glue off of concrete that will protect your health and your wallet.

To use the scraper attachment insert the blade into your reciprocating saw and lock it in place. First we used a utility knife to cut the carpet into strips and peeled each strip of carpet up. A 2 to 4 wide blade should be appropriate for removing carpet glue. A third alternative is to scrape off the adhesive.

Some carpenters glue the underlay down making it a little more difficult but not impossible to remove from the subfloor. This post contains affiliate links. How to remove glued down carpet. If you are faced with removing carpet padding that is stuck to your cement floor don t give up hope quite yet.

We removed carpet underlay and glue from a timber floor by scraping and then sanding with the floor sander and a makita orbital sander. Carpet padding adhesive can be a concern for any homeowner taking steps to update his home. Remove as much of the carpet glue as possible by scraping it using a razor blade scraper. It appears that the rubber padding was placed down in the 70 s 80 s then when it was replaced the current carpet pad and carpet were just place right on top of the rubber layer.

Under the carpet was a 6 mm 1 4 in thick rubber underlay. It does not come up easily. The scraper can easily remove big chunks of the glue which helps get the job done more easily later. It turns out it is very difficult to remove glued down carpet.

In fact it does its very best to remain firmly in place. When talking about how to update this we decided to leave the bedrooms as is try and remove the rubber padding from the dining room only and just update the. See my full disclosure here. I removed a dirty old carpet that was left on the basement floor by the previous owners of my house.

Some adhesives are water soluble drenching the floor with water often makes them easy to scrape off with a floor scraper chemical paint strippers also do the job. When removing carpet especially old carpet you never know what to expect when you get down to the padding. Wear a respirator gloves goggles and protective clothing if you choose this option.