Just pulled up some carpet in our old house, built in the early 1900's. We knew there appeared to be tar paper and thought there would be a huge task of tearing up the tar paper, but instead have found about 4 layers of newspaper under what I assume is tar paper, makes it very easy to get the tar paper up, have not removed much of the carpet yet, but all but top layer of papers looks to be in VERY GOOD condition???this doesn't seem to match everything I have heard about tar paper? Can't wait to get large enough parts of carpet up to see where the paper is from and how old it is.