Carpet Lasts as Long as the Pad Under It

Ask what pad is going under it before you ask what the carpet costs. Carpet wears from the back, not the face. Every footstep crushes the backing against whatever is under it, and if that pad is soft and thin the backing takes the whole load, the fibers stop standing back up, and the traffic lane goes flat and dull years early. Pad gets rated two ways: weight, in pounds per cubic foot, and thickness. Density is the one that matters. A thick, cheap pad feels wonderful in a showroom and bottoms out in a hallway inside a year. In a bedroom you can go softer. In a hallway, on a stair, or anywhere a family actually lives, you want a firm pad in the six to eight pound range and no more than about seven sixteenths of an inch thick. Most warranties say the same thing in small print.

The second thing that decides how long a carpet lives is how hard it was pulled. A knee kicker positions carpet. It does not stretch it. Carpet installed with a kicker alone goes down looking fine and then relaxes, and within a couple of humid summers you have ripples running across a room and a wrinkle at the door that catches a vacuum. A power stretcher braces off the opposite wall and pulls the carpet tight across the whole span, so it stays hooked on the tack strip and stays flat. It takes longer. It is also the difference between carpet you restretch in three years and carpet you do not. Tack strip gets replaced rather than reused, because old pins bend and old wood splits, and at a doorway the strip and the transition have to line up so the edge is not the first thing to fail.

What the visit covers

• Pull the old carpet and pad and haul both off the property
• Replace the tack strip instead of reusing bent old pins
• Sweep, scrape and screw down the deck before new pad goes in
• Pick pad density for the room, not for the showroom feel
• Staple or glue the pad and butt the seams tight
• Plan seams to run with the light from the main window
• Seam with hot melt tape and a tractor, not by eye
• Power stretch every span instead of kicking it into place
• Wrap stairs waterfall or upholster each tread as you choose
• Trim clean at thresholds and set the transition strips

Stairs, hallways and buildings with tenants

Stairs are where carpet gets judged. There are two ways to do them. Waterfall lets the carpet run straight off the nose and fall to the next tread, which is faster, uses less material and suits a plain straight run. Cap and band, sometimes called upholstered, wraps each tread individually and tucks tight under the nosing, so the shape of every step reads crisply from the side. It costs more in labor and it looks like somebody cared. On a stair with a curve, a winder, or an open side that you see from the hall, cap and band is usually the only one that works. Either way the pad on a stair gets cut per tread and stapled, never run long over the nose, because a pad that bridges the nosing crushes there first and you get a worn line across every single step.

In a two family or a small apartment building, the common stair and the hallway carry everybody who lives there, plus everything on their boots. Once the road crews start salting in November and until the streets get swept in spring, salt and grit ride in and settle into the pile right inside the door, where it cuts fibers like a file every time somebody walks over it. That is why we put the heaviest pad and the tightest construction in the entry and the stair, and why a walk off runner at the door pays for itself more than once. Seams matter here too. We plan them to run the same direction as the light from the main window instead of across it, keep them out of the middle of a doorway, and put them where furniture or traffic will not work the joint open.