Carpet Removal

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I've just taken out six rooms worth of carpets, plus hallway and stairs.  Always interesting to find out what's underneath . . . 

Taking it out yourself is easy enough.  You'll need a screwdriver and Stanley knife.   Find a corner where you can tug it up from the carpet grippers and loosen it around all the edges of the room (stick a screwdriver under a corner if you need to, to create a grip for yourself).  Then get out a sharp Stanley knife and cut along the length or width of the room, following the grain of the carpet to create a roughly 1.5m strip of carpet.  Then roll up the carpet in a sausage shape and take it out of the room.  The reason for cutting the carpet into a couple of strips is because it's easier to lift and carry a 'sausage' of carpet that's 1.5m long than one that's as long as the room.   Don't hire a skip, call one of those removals people who'll take stuff away in their van; it's usually cheaper than a skip.  You may need to unscrew the metal bits along the doorway that keep carpet down to remove them.

As for pulling up the carpet grippers, that's been a pain in the backside in my place.  I've got cement floors and it's been a battle to the death to pull the nails out of the ceramic tiles laid over the floor without cracking them to pieces.  

If you're planning to put down floorboards, you may or may not need to remove the skirting board first.  Different packs have different instructions - one pack of real wood floorboards that I was looking at buying needed the skirting board to be removed first, then re-fitted.  Probably best to decide what you want to put down on the floors first before removing anything if you don't need to.