apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Great job Sarah!!! It looks fantastic!

Thanks, Katie.

You left out "lots and lots of Ibuprofen." Repeatedly squeezing needle-nose pliers to rip out carpet staples can be killer on the hands. But as you pointed out, ripping up carpet really isn't that complicated. And sometimes you even find a hardwood floor already hidden underneath.

if you're lucky you only have one set's worth of carpet staples. i've pulled up carpet a number of times and the last time we had ancient staples (complete with wool pad bits still attached) and newer staples to contend with!

Good job! What a huge difference!

I so love hardwood floors. Beautiful

I did that in a studio years ago and what did I find? gorgeous hardwood flooring and the thing of it was, it was a crapshoot as to it's condition as so many in my building at that time were pretty worn and needed a total sanding and refinishing.

Mine, judging by the lighter stain was probably done in the 50's or 60's and before any real wear took place, got covered over in wall to wall carpeting.

The stuff in there when I moved in had been well cleaned, but was looking a little warn and in the 5 years I'd been in there already, the carpeting was really in need of a deep cleaning but since they were going back to the hardwood flooring (building built in the 1920's), it was OK to take up mine. :-)

It looks great! What's next? I'm waiting to see the final result.

We did the same thing this weekend! The problem with the amazing wood floors we found under the gross carpet is that now we have to replace all of our furniture. :)

We recently ripped up the awful beige carpet in a house that is over 100 years old, and I think the wood underneath is original. You are so lucky that the floor underneath was in good condition!

The major problem with our floors is that over the years people have painted the floor around the edges; brown, white, brown, then brown again. So I've been stripping paint for days. It will also require a lot of sanding for it to look nice and I wonder if it's worth the effort. The wood isn't super high quality, so it may not look fantastic when finished. Should we refinish the floors properly, or just sand them down a bit and paint them?

The house will be fully renovated in a couple years from now, so this is a fairly temporary solution (I just couldn't stand the carpet another second!). So we're going to rent a sander and try to refinish the floors ourselves. Has anybody had any experience with doing floors themselves? Any tips? What about painting the floorboards? Any suggestions/advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Stoat, repainting floors is a good way to hide flaws and very chic right now. There's a great post here on "How to Paint Your Floors and Not Screw It Up" (Maxwell didn't use a sander) and another post here with a how-to from Cottage Living.

Thank you Sarah C! I think painting is probably the best option for me at this point. Thank you for linking to such great sources!!!

I just wanted to know if you had to do anything to the hardwood floors after you uncovered them. We are renting and the landlord said there are hardwood floors underneath the berber carpet. We want to remove the carpet but I am worried about the amount of work that will be needed to resurface/refinish the floors.