How to Clean a Wood Floor After it Has Had Carpet on it
- 1). Pull up or scrape away any remnants that can be removed easily with a paint scraper. If the carpet left behind remnants from a general adhesive, this will get most of it up. However, a tar-based adhesive, which will be brown or tan, will be a little more difficult.
- 2). Clean up the remnants you scraped away, using a vacuum cleaner.
- 3). Apply a general carpet adhesive remover to the remnants that could not be scraped away. This type of product will work on general carpet adhesive, which will be a shade of yellow. For tar-based adhesive, use mineral spirits to remove the remnants. Mineral spirits is a solvent that can be used as a paint thinner.
- 4). Rinse the product you used to remove the remainder of the carpet adhesive with a damp mop. The mop should not be dripping with water because wood will expand when it's wet, which can cause cracks or splinters in the wood.
Source...