How to Lay a Carpet

Laying or changing the carpeting can give your home a facelift. Changing old carpets is one way to brighten a room, while carpeting can add plenty of warmth to it. With good instructions on laying a carpet, it is a job you can do yourself, though it does require a fair amount of effort. Having a few additional pairs of helping hands will go a long way in easing your burden, and getting the job done quicker. In addition, a good set of tools are a must when you get down to the job.

Proper Technique for Carpeting

Tools and Materials:

• Staple gun
• Carpet-layers hammer/ pin hammer
• Stanley knife
• Gripper strips
• Underlay/underpad
• Bolster chisel
• Knee kicker
• Hacksaw
• Threshold bar

Instructions:

1. Start by putting the carpet grip in place. It is usually ready-nailed, so you just need to secure it with a hammer, round the perimeter of the wall. Ensure that the pins of the grip face the wall. Also keep the carpet's depth between the grip and wall, for cutting the carpet. To discard the excess carpet grip, use the claw of the hammer to snap and then use your hands to break it off completely.
2. For difficult spots, such as under the radiator, place the head of a bolster over the nail. By whack the bolster on its shaft, you'll drive the nail in.
3. Begin from a corner, and lay out the underlay flush along the length of the carpet grip. Slice off the excess underlay using a Stanley knife, but leave it a little longer than required. To trim the underlay in place, slide the blade of the Stanley knife along the edge of the carpet grip.
4. Work a staple gun on the edge (a few in the middle too) of the underlay, to hold it in place. Do the same with the subsequent rolls, until you cover the room. At the other end, it will once again need to be trimmed along the width and length of the room.
5. With the preliminaries completed, we now get down to carpeting instructions. Start by spreading the carpet in the room, with an excess of 150mm to be trimmed off later. While laying it in the corners, use an instrument or your thumb fold it back, so that it fits snugly.
6. Now crop the carpet, leaving 40mm excess. For the final cropping, leave only 10mm around the edges which will go between the grip and skirting. Now bring out the knee kicker, and press its teeth into the carpet. Push the padded end with your knee to stretch the carpet forward.
7. Move along the wall and hook the carpet onto the grip. Use the bolster to push the extra 10mm of the carpet between the grip and skirting board. Work on one wall at a time.
8. You are almost done now. To finish up, use a hacksaw to crop the threshold strip to size, and use nails to hold it in place. Then fit the carpet to it, by trimming, stretching and finally pushing the carpet over the teeth of the threshold strip.

Having successfully tackled the task of laying the carpet in the rooms of your home, you may now set your gaze upon the bare stairs. Laying a carpet on stairs is not that much different from what you've just done, with the exception of the many corners and folds thrown in. You have to decide if you want to lay one continuous strip of carpet (waterfall method) or a piece of carpet for each step (cap and band method). If you need to know how to lay carpet on concrete use masonry tacks or epoxy adhesive to hold materials in place.