Carpet tack strips are wooden boards installed around the perimeter of a floor to hold carpet in place.
Remove tack strip from concrete without damaging floor.
Begin at the top of the stairs.
If you plan to polish the concrete and use it as the floor surface fill these holes with masonry caulking or leveling compound.
If the floor is made of concrete you are left with unsightly holes along the perimeter of the room.
You can take the woode out from around the nails and then.
If you decide to remove the carpet you must also pry up the tack strips which are held in place with nails.
Once you have all of the tack strips up it is time to remove any staples on the floor from the carpet pad.
If your floor is concrete then you can take a pry bar or the back of a hammer and place it under the strip directly next to one of the nails in it.
Carpet tack strips can usually remain in place but look for rust rot or other damage.
For safety place each strip in a box or trash can as you remove it.
The tack strips used to secure carpeting to a concrete slab are equipped with small hardened nails that penetrate and grip the concrete.
Removing tack strips from concrete leaves holes in the subfloor.
Since these tack strips are nailed into the floor there will be small holes in the floor when you are done but it is important to cause as little damage as possible in the process.
These small nails must be pried out as the tack strip is removed and they typically chip out the concrete gripped by them.
You must not pull out the nails.
A lot of times i can just use the pliers to get the staples up but some staples are so close to the floor that i need to use the wonder tool to get them started.
Continue pulling up carpet a few feet at a time and cutting it into easy to handle strips.
If you are pulling up carpet from stairs.
Roll or fold the strip secure with duct tape and remove it from the room.
I did remove tack strips from a terazzo concrete floor before refinishing the floor with an acid wash.