Landlord's Guide to Replacing Carpet & Flooring
How Is Carpet Installed?
Knowing
how carpet is installed will give you a lot of insight as to whether or not it
is being installed correctly and prepare you for
the experience of having your carpet installed.
Print my free Carpet Installation Get-Ready Checklist - This helps ensure your Safety, Security and Satisfaction.
"Where's my wallet? There's a lump under the carpet!"
Installing carpet is hard work, but the concept is very simple. Install the tackstrip, put down the padding, roll out the carpet, stretch in the carpet, trim up the edges, vacuum and enjoy!
Here is a basic description of "stretch-in" carpet installation:
First, tack-less strips are nailed down around the perimeter of the room.
Tack strips are 4’ long wooden strips, and are nailed
directly to the floor around the perimeter of the room. They have many very
sharp nails that are aimed towards the wall and are designed to hold the carpet
tight, after being stretched over them.
Second, the pad is rolled out and stapled down to wooden floors or glued down to concrete floors. The pad is then trimmed up to the inside edge of the tack strips, and secured to the floor with staples, tape or glue making sure that the pad does not lie on top of the tack strip.
Next, the carpet is rolled out, in a
predetermined direction, and if there are seams to be put together, preparation
now begins. Because carpet usually comes in 12 foot widths, it is
sometimes necessary to seam together two pieces of carpet in order to make it
wide enough for the room size.
Gilligan is using a hammer-tacker to secure the carpet padding to the floor.
Before two edges of carpet are joined, both sides must be cut perfectly straight, as this will help to hide the finished seam from view.
The two separate pieces of carpet are then joined together permanently using a seaming iron: an electric iron that simply heats a hot-melt adhesive tape that is placed underneath the edges of both carpet pieces to be joined.
After the seam tape becomes hot, both edges of the carpet that are to be joined together are carefully placed into the hot glue, and then allowed to cool.
Here Gilligan is seaming together two pieces of sculptured carpet between the living room and the hallway.
After all the seams are
joined and the hot-melt glue cools the carpet is ready to be stretched. The carpet is then stretched from each wall to the opposite
wall and attached to the tack strips allowing a few inches of extra carpet to go
up each wall.
After the carpet has been completely secured to the tack strips, the carpet is trimmed flush with the wall and the excess is removed. Then the trimmed edge is tucked in where the wall meets the floor. The carpet around the doorjambs is then trimmed by hand and neatly tucked.
A good installer will always remove all carpet scraps and replace all doors and sliding closet doors and hardware, and if you are really lucky he may even vacuum! Although this is a very basic description of how carpet is installed, it should help you to know a bit about carpet installation before your installer comes to install your new carpet.
Note:
It is very important to have children and pets safely out of the way when your carpet is being installed, as most tools used to install carpets are sharp and can cause serious injury or worse.
Print up these helpful forms:
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Carpet Installer Questionnaire (Before You Hire)