Sometimes it's best not to ask why.

[highup]

Did a repair today on recently installed carpeting. Provenza a material similar to Cortec was installed in the kitchen living dining and hallway. Two bedrooms have a high quality nylon pattern carpet. Lady complained that the two doorways felt different when walked on. She said one bedroom transition seemed to be higher than the other.
Here are the pictures she sent me.

 

[highup]

Anyhow, I drove down there today to see what I could do. The flooring underneath the bedrooms and the hallway is vinyl. This is a concrete slab not a wood floor.
I came prepared to use z bar if there was enough material to fold under, but ended up spacing the tack strip fairly tight to the vinyl laminate and trimming and tucking it in. For a tiny bit of additional depth I cut a quarter inch strip of the vinyl out between the tack strip and the laminate. I feel the entire quarter inch gap between the tack strip and the laminate it's almost 1/8 of an inch of latex so when I tuck the carpet in it would be embedded well enough or sealed well enough that I wouldn't need to worry about raveling issues. It went really well and turned out super nice. It was a very nice lady and she was very happy with the end result.

 

[highup]

So you may be wondering what the problem was. Well the carpet pad was butted up to the provenza laminate and the carpet was turned and tacked onto the last quarter inch of the laminate.
No tackstrip in the doorway. The carpet was attached to the very edge of the laminate with staples about every inch to inch and a quarter. Some staples missed the edge of the laminate and went through the vinyl flooring underneath and bent when they hit the concrete. Some Staples only hit with one leg and the other one into the vinyl underneath the laminate. Strange.

 

[highup]

On the second bedroom doorway when I pull the carpet loose behind the door so I can hold back the carpet and remove the doorway staples, I discovered that the carpet was stapled to the tackstrip. The tack strip however was almost totally underneath the baseboard. On top of that, the pattern was also overlapping the edge of the tackstrip a little bit. If the pad was one quarter inch away from the tackstrip, that would be just fine. When the pad jumps up onto the tack strip....
....ummm, that's not fine.
Once I saw the mess that was around the perimeter of this bedroom I limited my repair to the doorways which was the only complaint.
When these two bedrooms wrinkle, and I'm betting at some point they will, the carpet will need to be pulled out from the entire perimeter of the room
......with the exception of the doorways
And the room will need to be double stripped and restretched. Plus moving the furniture. It would be quicker to reinstall carpet then to do the repair. So sad.
Look at the last image closely. You can even see the red color of the tack strip against the baseboard.

 

[Mark Brown]

Some peoples children just cannot be saved. Lucky for her, the lady could be.

 

[highup]

Super nice lady to work for and she liked the results. I took my FEIN tool down yesterday because I knew I'd be cutting the strip of the laminate back a quarter inch or so to remove the damage edge of the plank that had staples in it. I just ended up using a utility knife for my square. I just kept scoring over and over and over until it trimmed off the damaged edge.

 

[zannej]

Man, in those first pics I could really see what the problem was. That was sloppy! It looks 100x better now that you fixed it.

 

[highup]

The blue tape in the photos was the straight line I used to retrim the edge of the material and get rid of those staple holes and chipped spots.
Installer has had a very heavy workload and it work seem to be getting sloppy as he ran from job to job attempting to keep everyone happy. You can't work that way in this trade. I'd rather have 10 people pissed off because I couldn't get their job done as soon as they wanted it to be done then to have to go back and fix something that I messed up.
He's a nice guy and I think he's just stressed out.

 

[Mark Brown]

I learned that lesson a long time ago Highup and i explain it like this, im gonna be late to your job, but at least you know i wont leave your job to run off to another job. Seems to make most people understand.

 

[Jon]

We never put the skirting boards on top of anything here

 

[highup]

I learned that lesson a long time ago Highup and i explain it like this, im gonna be late to your job, but at least you know i wont leave your job to run off to another job. Seems to make most people understand.

I tell people up front that I work slowly and do so because I want them to be happy with my work.
And for any customer waiting in line, I'll tell them same thing if they don't already know it. I'm not going to hurry up the job that I'm on and I'm not going to hurry up their job. People understand.

 

[highup]

We never put the skirting boards on top of anything here

The first carpet was put in at some point and later on someone decided to put baseboards in this room. That might have happened years later. When the installer ripped out the old carpet he should have put a second row of tack strip around the perimeter of the room. With the tack strip virtually under the baseboard there is simply no way to stretch the carpet. You just trim the edge and tuck it under as far as you can get it so it connects to some of the tack strip. I suppose someday I might be back down there to redo the whole room. The complaint was the doorways so that's what I was asked to fix.

 

[zannej]

The husband of a contractor's daughter said that his father-in-law told him when it came to his line of work you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good. You can have a combination of any of those two but you won't get all 3. Around here, you can't even get the "good" part. They will do it slow, expensive, & bad.

Do you think the customer will call you back to fix the rest of the carpet later on?

 

[DarisMulkin]

The first carpet was put in at some point and later on someone decided to put baseboards in this room. That might have happened years later. When the installer ripped out the old carpet he should have put a second row of tack strip around the perimeter of the room. With the tack strip virtually under the baseboard there is simply no way to stretch the carpet. You just trim the edge and tuck it under as far as you can get it so it connects to some of the tack strip. I suppose someday I might be back down there to redo the whole room. The complaint was the doorways so that's what I was asked to fix.

Whenever I found tackless under the base I was usually able to get my take up bar just under the back edge and tip it up and out. Then put the new strip down.

 

[highup]

The husband of a contractor's daughter said that his father-in-law told him when it came to his line of work you can have it fast, you can have it cheap, or you can have it good. You can have a combination of any of those two but you won't get all 3. Around here, you can't even get the "good" part. They will do it slow, expensive, & bad.

Do you think the customer will call you back to fix the rest of the carpet later on?

The carpet insulation was guaranteed by the store that sold it. The guarantee is good for the life of the carpet if it needs restretching or anything.

 

[highup]

Whenever I found tackless under the base I was usually able to get my take up bar just under the back edge and tip it up and out. Then put the new strip down.

You're talking, that once you get an edge loose, you put the pry bar under the carpet and walk it loose?
This one had staples also.

 

[Floorist]

One of the "installers" around here air-stapled all the carpet down and he used long staples.

 

[DarisMulkin]

One of the "installers" around here air-stapled all the carpet down and he used long staples.

Been there. I went to work for a company as install manager and was sent ot to repair a statirway. The boss himself had done this stairway. Anyway he had used a airstapler with long cement coated staples. I filled a sandwich bag off 10 steps, took them back to the store and asked "who the hell did that stairway?" When he said he did I threw the bag at him with staples going all over and walked out. But told him you have to replace the carpet first.

 

[highup]

Carpet dude:
Hey boss can I staple the stairway instead of using tacks? All I have is my quarter inch crown Senco SKS.
Boss:
Sure, that should work just fine.

 

[Floorist]

Carpet dude:
Hey boss can I staple the stairway instead of using tacks? All I have is my quarter inch crown Senco SKS.
Boss:
Sure, that should work just fine.

I have seen it done with long roofing nails.