Materials Needed:
Box cutter (for removing carpet)
Twine (for binding rolled carpet)
Elmer’s Glue All
Rit Dye in Dark Brown
Water Based Polyurethane – designated for floors (NOT OIL BASED)
Disposable gloves
Paint brush
Brown contractor’s paper
Stain pad
Extension pole (I unscrewed mine from my broom and just used that)
Large bowl or pan
Measuring cup
STEPS:
1. Remove the carpet
I’ll be honest, I don’t do this part. Remember when I told you about my demo hubby? He is THE best! He went to the store and got a box cutter and twine and had this step complete in about an hour! If you have trim/baseboards that need to be removed, do that first. Next, cut the carpet in about 3ft strips. This allows you to roll the carpet and padding up into manageable sized rolls. Secure the roll with twine and haul it to the trash.
2. Prep the sub-floor
Now that the carpet is out of there, it’s time to remove the tack strips, staples and hammer down any nails sticking up. Once that is complete, I rolled Killz over my entire floor. This is not necessary if you don’t have any stains, but I wanted a clean slate. It helped too when placing the paper, because the unpainted sub floor would get dyed very easily and blend in with the paper, so I didn’t realize there were some spots that were not overlapped enough.
**Foreshadowing alert, this was one of my issues!