Keystone's Flooring Expose - Picking Out Your Carpet
I'll be explaining some of the terminology and some pricing issues you might not catch if you haven't shopped for carpet much in the past. You'll also be able to measure your room.
In this lens you will also be able to pick out your padding. More to come.
Terminology and Materials
First off, I should probably just give you the basics. The monster Work In Progress that I am creating as a full industry glossary will hopefully be in a finished, readable form soon. It can be found here.For now here are some terms that I think you will need to understand when you visit the local carpet store. One hint: If a store employee can't explain these terms to you, then they possibly don't know what they are talking about. They likely won't know what the static value of their own bestselling Philadelphia Stainmaster Commercial, but they should be able to tell you the good and bad points of ordering it with unitary backing, and know where to look or who to call for the information you want.
Measuring Your Room
This might sound like an insignificant step. Your just grab the measurements from north to south and east to west, right? Wrong. In any kind of floorcovering, you have the chance of one wall being longer or "out of square." Your also need to determine where to stop your carpet in your doorways, typical is half way under the actual door, or if it doesn't have a door, in the middle of the jamb. And then there are the nooks and crannies, or under shelves, especially anything hidden by furniture that you won't see until you move the furniture out of the room for the removal and installation!
When I expand this to a whole lens by itself, I will give you drawings of several possible snags you will come across if you measure enough. Like rock walls, thinking an entertainment center is the long wall, when actually you need to go to the back wall behind the entertainment center.
Also, it is actually easier, in my opinion, to make a drawing (doesn't have to be to scale) of your house plan. Or at least the area you are planning to carpet. This comes in handy for many reasons:
1. You can get an accurate and easy square foot count if you are buying from one of those warehouses, or it's easily converted to yardage as I will show you later.
2. You can enter individual area sizes and determine where you want your seams. When figuring seams always allow for less than 12 foot on your carpet, assuming you are using 12 foot material. This is because on the rare occasion you actually do receive the entire 144 inches wide, you will still need to cut off a bare minimum of 1/2 inch if not as much as 2 inches, depending on the backing and the "tip shear." Tip shear is when the level shear machine gets to the edge it is harder to control the shear height. This causes inconsistancies and at least will cause a darker line at your seam, that you will not be able to get out.
3. When you take you plan drawing with you, it makes it easier to do your cuts. Also, it comes in handy to figure angles and hard hallways, a drawing makes it easier to visualize what you need to do with your carpet to make it fit the area.
If you can see my drawing here, (a larger version is coming soon)
the colors will show you what directions to measure. Blue is the width of your room. I added the green and red to illustrate a point. The red is needed if you run the carpet into the closets. If by some chance, you decide not to carpet the closets, run the measurements to the middle of the door as illustrated by the green arrow.
Now take your blue arrow measurement and multiply it by the green or red arrow measurement. For reasons I will explain, if you end up with more than 9 inches (double digits) round up to the nearest foot before you multiply. Your calculator can not distinguish one inch from eleven inches, and your equation will be wrong. you will be short on carpet!
Now this answer is your square footage. You will need this for your pad as well as your carpet. If you were using tile or hard wood you would stop there.
Again, be sure the price you get is for square yardage so you can compare all prices equally. Here's the reason: You divide your square footage by 9 not 3 to get square yardage.
WIDTH X LENGTH = SQUARE FOOT / 9 = SQUARE YARD
Repeat for each room that you are going to carpet.
To get an accurate tack strip measurement add all of your wall lengths together and divide by the length of the piece of tack strip, typically 4 foot.
Get Out Darn Spot!: How To Properly Care For Your Carpet And Upholstery
Amazon Price: $9.95 (as of 11/22/2009)
Don't purchase another piece of carpet or upholstery until you've read this book. The one and only book you'll ever need for carpet and upholstery care!
Determine Your Subfloor And Choose Your Padding
Before you get to the store
You should have already determined your subflooring. Wood or concrete "slab." This might be crucial for the carpet store to know if you are on a slab floor and took up your tackstrip to paint your trim. Any carpet store worth their salt should pay their installers extra for reinstalling the tack on a concrete floor. Here's why: As concrete ages it gets harder until it reaches a "half life," if you will, after 80 or so years (time varies extremely because of purity of the mixture, humidity, freeze/thaw, moisture barriers under the slab, and so on) start breaking back down. In certain circumstances I have seen the concrete break down because it froze or rained on it before it "flashed" with in weeks of the pour. Flashing or quickset is the point where concrete reaches its primary hardness point, usually if you can walk on it with out leaving an impression it is close to it's flash point. Us tile guys also call this "slaking." And in grout, you want it to flash some then restir the grout to ensure a consistant working time, and also helps keep down things like latex leeching, but that's for the HOW TO do tile lens right?
Why should it cost extra part two, is because when you took up the old strip, you always leave holes in the concrete. It's doesn't help to fill them with anything unless you spend a fortune priming the holes with liquid latex, then letting that dry and filling the holes with a polymer thinset for tile, or construction glue. Now those holes are going to reek havoc on anyone trying to nail into your hard old concrete. Because the new strip is usually going to have the drive nails in about the same intervals, so if you nail into one hole, you'll hit all of them for the whole four foot span.
Typically, let the installers choose which strip need replacing, because the only reason for the strip is to get your stretch and to tuck the carpet in nicely with your trim. The manufacturers hardly ever use a good wood and they don't use any type of coated nail so a minimum of water and your tacks and drive nails are going to discolor your wood and make it look bad.
Now, choosing your pad. There are several options. Ranging from mobile home grade prime urethane to the awesome new Leggett and Platt prime and rebond hybrid, which is also treated with a hypoallergenic and a mold reducer.
As I rewrite this whole section into it's own lens, I will define these differences and give drawings on what to look for.
Choosing your carpet is basically the same, only with near infinite choices. You will walk into a carpet store that is an "order only" or "designer" store or you will walk into a store that carries inventory. The latter is better in my opinion unless you are searching for something out of a magazine. You can search online and there are good brokerages that can help, but you will either have to install the product yourself, or hire it locally, anyway. And your warranties will be exponentially harder to work out if you don't buy local. And of course more on all of this later.
Pre Installation Preparations
Whether you are doing it yourself or not
Either way, Step One is to remove the furniture. Your installers will charge for it.
Also anything hanging over head such as drapes, blinds, shelving, and any breakable objects should be moved. They should have insurance, but why risk it?
Step Two is to remove the doors. It is sometimes a good idea to actually do this first to facilitate easy movement of the furniture. A good idea if you are doing your whole house or if there are lots of doors, to mark them on top. If you are going to paint them make sure to cover your marks with masking tape to prevent them being covered up with paint over spray.
Most hinges come apart easily by removing the pin with a nail set or an awl and a hammer, but some (mostly in older mobile homes) have to have the screws removed.
I would suggest vacuuming the carpet once more just to make sure that you have removed as much debris and dust as possible.
If you are paying the installers to remove the old flooring, you can typically call it a day until it is time to move the furniture back in, but if you are removing it yourself: Cut it into more manageable sizes unless your are planning on selling or giving it away. Pull it all loose from the tackstrip before trying to roll it up.
I would suggest that unless you have a strong back or two people for lifting, most rooms are better off cut in half. There will be a lot less paint damage or even less damage to the trim. Cut the door ways apart as well.
more to come!
Installation
Put it in there
But the main categories in this series of lenses will be: Tools, tacking and padding, layout, seaming, stretching, trimming and cleanup, and some final considerations like what to look for in a new vaccuum cleaner.
Hoover F7411-900 SteamVac Dual V Widepath Carpet Cleaner with Powered Handheld Tool, Plum
Amazon Price: $169.99 (as of 11/22/2009)
List Price: $239.99
Usually ships in 24 hours
Care and Cleaning
And some how to's for special stain removal
Pets are also a controversial issue. If you have indoor pets, they will do harm more than likely to nearly any kind of floor you have. More than once, I have had people tell me, "Tiny is house broke." Usually angrily... And I pull the carpet back with huge yellow stains in the backing. Typically the excuse is a hot water tank leak, a toilet back flow, or the steam cleaner didn't do a good job. When it is painfully obvious with the cat hiding under the bed or the puppy dog eyes that they are guilty. Or seriously the pattern of the stains is nowhere near a bathroom, and a steam cleaner won't leave a yellow stain.
And while we're on the most common bantor at the job site: Please don't tell the installer the canary joke...
Also, another good tip while you are waiting for me to expand this lens, vaccuum at least once per week, make sure your vaccuum isn't clogged, especially if it is a HEPA model, keep your filters and bag clean. A good rule of thumb for anything, whether be it your car or your house air conditioning, not just your vaccuum always change your filters regularly, that what they are there for, and they won't work properly or will cause it to quit completely if you don't and usually not doing so voids the warranty.
Links To Good Places To Buy From
For now some tools: A good place to start
Give Me Some Feedback
Show me what you think you need to know about carpet!
Be sure if you are asking me an important question, to leave an email address in a non-spammable format (example: email-at-hotmail-dot-com) so I can get back in touch with you.
I usually charge for consulting, but an occasional hand holding is an exercise in stability so some basic questions are welcomed!
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Reply
- Jul 22, 2009 @ 11:54 am
- Nice lens, I thought it was pretty insightful so I decided to give you 5 stars, hey, I have a page that's pretty similar to yours, maybe you can check it out when you have time: The Perfect Carpet
Index
Time for a review of installing your carpet
Glossary
- The Carpet Glossary
- A wide spot in the road for definitions applied to flooring
by sirkeystone
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