How Long Does It Take And How Much Should You Pay? Part 1
I hired a crew to do some demo work before the almost-total-gut rehab on my just finished project in Homewood, IL. But before I set them loose in the house, I wanted to actually time myself doing some of that demo work, so I would know how long it should take -- and whether or not the contractor was bullshitting me and overcharging for some elements of the job.
So I thought I would share a little of what I learned. In case you’ve never done any of this kind of work, here are some thoughts to consider:
- How much is the contractor charging you per task, or per hour?
- Do you really think you should pay someone $25 per hour or more to do something any nearby high-school kid could do? (It’s understandable if the contractor who you are hiring to install really nice flooring, or to do a great paint job, or to install new kitchen and bath fixtures is charging you $25 per hour or more to do skilled-labor tasks -- but maybe they’re not the person you should have doing the “a-monkey-could-do-it” demo work.)
- Could you even do some of the unskilled work yourself (I’m writing this column for the basic or new investor without a lot of experience or contractor skills -- so don’t get uptight with me if you are beyond “unskilled.”)
How Hard Is It to Remove Wall-to-Wall Carpet?
In this particular column I’m going to focus on one of the easier tasks -- removing wall-to-wall carpet.
I started in the living room, which was roughly 20x15. I timed myself removing the carpeting, the padding underneath, and all the tack strips around the edges of the room. I also had myself on the clock until I had then cut the carpeting and padding into manageable four-foot long rolls, duct-taped those rolls, and removed them from the house. And I didn’t stop the clock until I had all the tack strips up and gone, and the room swept broom clean.
First let me say that, although it is a little bit physically demanding, pulling up carpeting is really easy. And I mean REALLY easy. At least as far as skills are concerned.
If you know you’re going to be installing new flooring, and probably painting the walls and maybe the baseboards (or better yet, installing new base and quarter-round), then you should have no worries about using a screwdriver or, better, a pry-bar or crow-bar, to pull up an edge of the carpet near one corner of the room. This will take you mere seconds, and should not cause any damage to anything other than the carpet itself.
Once you have the corner of the carpet up, grab it with your hands and pull it, hard, until it starts to come away from the subfloor. BE SURE TO WEAR THICK CONTRACTOR GLOVES OR YOU WILL CERTAINLY SUFFER SOME CUTS AND RUG-BURNS. You’re also going to want to wear a mask, as this project can be very dusty.
But anyway, I literally removed all the carpeting and padding from a room 20 feet by 15 feet in about 15 minutes. I used a tape measure to roughly mark out 4-foot sections on the back of the carpet. Four-foot wide rolls of carpet are easily handled by both you and the garbage men, or whoever will be removing the carpet from your property.
I then cut the carpet along those marks using a straight-edge and a razor. It only took a few minutes to cut the entire carpet up into several four-foot strips, duct-tape it into rolls, and carry it out to the garage to await the trash haul-out.
The most time consuming part of removing wall to wall carpet -- and the most physically demanding part of the job -- is removing the tack strips that held the carpet down. I wasn’t working in a house with hardwood flooring under the carpet, just regular subfloor in most of the rooms, so I had no problem literally using a garden hoe to roughly pry up the tack strip. Obviously, if there was hardwood flooring that I was planning to refinish under the carpet, I would have used a more gentle approach.
But since it was just plywood subfloor, I didn’t have to worry about being gentle. A good solid shove of the hoe under the edge of the tack strip sent most of it flying, though some spots were nailed down a little harder and required more effort. I’ll admit I got a little sweaty on this detail, but it was a pretty good aerobic workout, so you’ll get some great exercise on this step. I did have to get down on my hands and knees and use a pry-bar on a few stubborn pieces, but most of the tack strip came up with the hoe.
So How Long Does It Take?
In the end, the total time elapsed to remove all the carpet, all the padding, all the tack strips, to cut the carpet and padding into four-foot rolls, duct tape the rolls together, and remove it all from the house -- and to sweep up and throw out all the broken up tack strips and loose carpet staples and nails -- was one hour and fifteen minutes. Again, this was for a room that was 20 by 15.
I had never removed any wall to wall carpeting in my life prior to this little test, so it’s not like I knew or used any tricks -- other than maybe using the garden hoe to remove the tack strips.
So How Much Does It Cost?
So now think about it: What is your contractor charging you to remove wall to wall carpeting as part of your project?
It’s a totally unskilled labor task. Any high school kid would probably be happy to get $12 or $15 per hour to do this for you. They aren’t earning that much at McDonald’s, believe me.
So don’t let some contractor BS you into paying many hundreds or thousands of dollars to remove the wall-to-wall carpeting from your rehab project if you can calculate the task out to be one day’s work for one one person -- and potentially only about four hours for two people working together. Honestly, do you make $1,000 per day?
If you’re removing the carpeting from an average 3-bedroom home with a living room, dining room, and family room you could conceivably do this work yourself in about 8 hours, or have some neighborhood teens help you and get the whole thing done for a couple hundred dollars.
If you’ve got a demo contractor quoting you something like $800 or $1,000 for this task, take a step back and consider hiring some day laborers off Craigslist or something. Or is there a list of handymen and contractors and day-laborers right here on Bigger Pockets? (Hey BP staff: That would be an awesome feature!)
Include the Cost of Trash Removal
In my project, I was piling all the carpet and other debris from the complete rehab into the garage, and later paid some trash haul-out guys to deal with that. So, unless your village will allow you to put all the rolls of carpet at the curb for trash pickup, you may have to calculate a removal cost into the whole project. If your contractor is including complete removal of all carpet from your premises as part of his quote, take that into account.
And remember, you can put up to 3,000 pounds of debris into a Bagster and have it hauled away (certain areas only) for less than $200. If you have Bagster service in your community, I highly recommend it. In Illinois -- or at least in the Chicago area (and not in every suburb) Bagster service is provided by Waste Management, the trash company.
Can You Do This Yourself?
This might be a project you want to handle yourself, or not. Everything I’ve written above is really just meant as some food for thought.
But I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to deal with this, and would rather just pay someone whatever he’s asking, and Maybe We Should Just Have a Drink Instead...
Adam St. James
Cell: 630-697-4500
Email: [email protected]
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