When the timing is right it is common for a residential customer to ask that we seal coat floors prior to new carpet being installed. Seal coating floors is not difficult but getting the floors can be a challenge…

That was recently the case. It was a vacant house and new carpet was to be installed after all the painting was complete. We did the ceilings, walls, doors, trims and windows. Lots of painting. It took a bit of prep as the home was a new purchase and had been neglected.

The carpet installer was behind schedule so I offered to remove the carpet and pad to speed things up and not have to circle back at a later date. Removing the carpet was rather straight forward. The carpet pad not so much. It was stapled down by someone that got a great deal on staples. There was a ton of them holding the pad down. What was worse was removing the staples. It took maybe an hour and a half to remove the carpet and eleven hours to remove the staples. It was about a half hour per stair for staples plus the rooms and hallway on top of that. Never again.

After the carpet, pad and staples were removed we swept and vacuumed the floor and used oil base (original) Kilz as the sealer. If you have never used this product then your not familiar with it’s strong odor. The fumes can also build up and be explosive so proper precautions should be taken. No pilot lights, etc.

By comparison it took about 2 hours to seal the floors. Pulling carpet staples is awful. We used pliers, needle nose pliers, screw drivers and a hammer. There is likely a flooring guy laughing after reading saying “you only need the XYZ staple remover by Ronco” ha.

We will stick with seal coating floors.