Severn Wood Flooring has helped homeowners replace carpet with hardwood in Severn, MD for 20+ years, serving surrounding cities including Jessup, Elkridge, Odenton, Glen Burnie and Linthicum. We pull up the carpet, carpet pad and tack strip, fix and flatten the subfloor underneath, and install solid or engineered hardwood that ties into the wood floors already in your house. One bedroom or an entire upper level, the estimate is written and itemized so you can see each part of the job.
Many houses built over the last few decades came with hardwood in the entry, hall and kitchen and carpet everywhere else. Replacing that carpet room by room is one of the most common ways owners update a house, and the hard part is not the new wood itself. It is making the new floor meet the old one, the stairs and the doorways so cleanly that it looks like it was always there.
What Happens When The Carpet Comes Up
Removing Carpet, Pad And Tack Strip
We roll out the carpet and carpet pad, pull the tack strip around the room’s edges and remove every staple left in the subfloor. The debris leaves the house with us. In a room that has had pets, we look for urine stains on the subfloor, since they need to be sealed or the boards replaced before new wood goes down or the odor comes back through the new floor.
Hardwood Already Hiding Underneath
In older houses, wall-to-wall carpet often hides red oak strip flooring that was covered decades ago. Those floors usually have tack strip holes around the edges, staples across the field and paint drips along the walls, but they often refinish beautifully. We check under a corner first, and if there is sound hardwood there, refinishing it is usually far less costly than a new floor.
Old Tile Or Mastic Under The Carpet
In basements and some older rooms, carpet was laid over older resilient floor tile or black mastic adhesive. Those materials can contain asbestos and must not be sanded, scraped dry or broken up. If we find them, we stop and identify the material, and the next step is testing and the right abatement trade before any wood goes in.
Preparing The Subfloor For Wood
Flattening And Refastening
Carpet hides a lot. A subfloor that was fine under thick pad can have high seams, low spots and loose panels that would make a hardwood floor rock or squeak. We check it with a straightedge, sand down high spots, fill low spots, and refasten the subfloor to every joist where it moves or creaks underfoot.
This is the step that decides whether the new floor is quiet. Hardwood laid over an unprepared subfloor develops squeaky floorboards and nail pops within months, and fixing that afterward means lifting boards.
Moisture Checks And Acclimation
We take moisture readings on the subfloor and on the new flooring before installation, and let the wood acclimate in the rooms it will go into. In a finished basement, the slab is tested first, because carpet over concrete can hide moisture that would ruin a wood floor.
Choosing The Wood And Tying It In
Solid Or Engineered Hardwood
Above grade on a wood subfloor, solid hardwood is the long-term choice and can be refinished many times. Engineered flooring suits basements, slabs and rooms where floor height is tight, and it is more stable through humid summers and dry winters. We compare both for each room rather than picking one product for the whole house.
Matching The Floors You Already Have
When carpeted bedrooms meet a hardwood hallway, the new boards are woven into the existing floor at each doorway rather than stopped at a threshold strip. We match the species and board width, run the boards in the same direction, and sand and finish the hall and the new rooms together so the color and sheen match throughout.
Where you would rather keep the hall floor as it is, we can install a prefinished floor that closely matches and use a flush transition at the door. We explain the trade-offs of each approach before you decide.
Doorways, Closets And Transitions
Door bottoms often need trimming once carpet is gone, and closets need to be included or deliberately left out. Where hardwood meets tile, vinyl or remaining carpet, we choose transitions that sit flush or close to it. All of that is planned before ordering so the floor heights work room to room.
Stairs, Condos And Rentals
Carpeted Stairs To Hardwood
If the stairs are carpeted too, they can be converted with new hardwood treads and risers that match the new floor. Stairs are quoted tread by tread, because a staircase takes very different time from the same area of flat floor.
Condos And Shared Floors
Taking out carpet in a condo removes a lot of sound absorption, and the neighbor below will hear the difference. We install a sound-reducing underlayment suited to the flooring and read the association’s own documents before ordering, since many associations have rules on hard flooring over occupied units.
Rentals And Turnover
Landlords often swap carpet for hardwood in rented townhouses because a wood floor can be screened and recoated between tenants instead of replaced, and it does not hold pet stains and odors. The itemized invoice records the new floor’s installation date and condition, which is useful the next time a security deposit question comes up.
- 20+ Years Experience
- Written Itemized Estimates
- Dust-Contained Sanding