The house I bought a while ago has the carpet and padding layed down on the
floor with staples around the edges. Rolling it all up, staining, sanding
and applying varathane took a while but it looks great. Now for the stairs.
I see glue has been applied to the black padding under the carpet. I want to
keep all the wood and go through the same procedure as I did with the
floors. So far I have been working on one stair at a time. Ripping off the
carpet, removing the edge staples, ripping up the padding and then using a
chisel to remove the glue. The chisel is on an angle it does not damage the
wood and does a good job of removing most of the mess. I use Goo Gone on the
thick glue which does an ok job but im looking a a better chemical. Anyone
know of anything that would work better?

miker

miker wrote:
The house I bought a while ago has the carpet and padding layed down on the
floor with staples around the edges. Rolling it all up, staining, sanding
and applying varathane took a while but it looks great. Now for the stairs.
I see glue has been applied to the black padding under the carpet. I want to
keep all the wood and go through the same procedure as I did with the
floors. So far I have been working on one stair at a time. Ripping off the
carpet, removing the edge staples, ripping up the padding and then using a
chisel to remove the glue. The chisel is on an angle it does not damage the
wood and does a good job of removing most of the mess. I use Goo Gone on the
thick glue which does an ok job but im looking a a better chemical. Anyone
know of anything that would work better?

miker

Your box store paint department has a selection of solvents that could
be what you need. Xylene is a good one for rubber based adhesives.
Most active is methylene chloride, the common componrnt of many paint
strippers. 3M has some good proprietary solvent strippers also that
would be worth trying. If you are lucky, you can bring home a box full
of small cans of solvents, so don't blow big bucks until you're sure
of which one works best. Good luck.

Jpe