Everything You Need To Know About Carpet Repair
(But Didn’t Know Whom to Ask)
Carpet Repair: An Intro
Let’s start with the basics: carpet repair is possible. If you would rather repair your carpet than spend hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars replacing it, a carpet repair may be for you.
In subsequent articles I will be giving step-by-step instruction on:
- How to patch carpet
- How to stretch carpet article
- How to repair a carpet seam
- How to do a carpet to tile transition
- How to repair Berber carpet
- How to remove carpet
- How to use a cookie cutter tool to do a patch
- How to remove dog pet urine from carpet, remove dog urine, remove cat urine.
- How to repair flood damaged carpet
- How to remove stains from carpet
Although the average homeowner may be able to repair their carpet themselves, it’s not necessarily the best choice.
A carpet repair professional can do carpet stretching and carpet patching in a small fraction of the time it would take an untrained person while making a hard job look easy.
If you are a homeowner and want to try it yourself, I caution you that if the quality of the carpet repair really matters, then hire a pro.
For now I’ll just skim the surface and describe the most common types of carpet repair. Later, I’ll go in depth and explain in more detail about each type of carpet repair.
Here are some examples of different types of carpet repair
- Carpet Stretching
- Carpet Patching
- Carpet to Tile Transitions
- Berber Carpet Repair
- Carpet Seam Repair
- Repairing Pet Damaged Carpet (Including Removing Pet Urine)
- Repairing Flood Damaged Carpet
- Reinstalling Carpet After Remodeling
- Repair Stair Carpet
- Carpet Stain Removal
Carpet Stretching:
When an original carpet installation is done properly, you should never need to re-stretch loose carpet. Proper installation requires a tool called a carpet stretcher or a power stretcher. (Not a kicker, kickers aren’t’t nearly enough.) When you see carpet ripples, carpet wrinkles, or bunched-up carpet, that’s when you know you need to have your carpet stretched.
Most of the time, a loose carpet can be re-stretched without needing to take apart seams. If seams do need to be taken apart, it opens up a whole other can of worms.
Furniture moving when stretching carpet: If there’s some furniture in the room, we can often use our carpet stretcher without having to clear the room entirely. Often we can move the furniture from one side of the room to the other and stretch one side of the room at a time.
Carpet patching:
If you have a carpet stain that you can’t get out or you have damaged carpet due to a carpet burn (not the good kind), or your bad dog or cat thinks that carpet is a food group, then a carpet patch may be the only solution.
Patching carpet is not as easy as it looks. The carpet patch needs to be exactly perfect. If there’s any overlap or gap at the seam (at all), you’ll be sorry.
You can use a leftover piece of carpet from the original installation or steal a piece of carpet from a closet to do your carpet patching. One thing you probably can’t do is go to the carpet store and buy a piece to match.
Carpet To Floor Transitions:
A carpet to floor transition is anyplace where the carpet ends and the floor begins. If it’s at a tile floor we call it a carpet to tile transition.
Many people install their own tile but don’t know how to finish the job with the carpet to tile transition. Often professional tile installers don’t know how to finish their job with a proper carpet to tile transition. There are several good ways to do a carpet to floor transition that I will explain in the carpet to tile transition article.
Berber Carpet Repair:
When people refer to a Berber carpet, they’re referring to a looped carpet with rows. It’s not really a Berber carpet but for our purposes here it’s okay to call it Berber. For an interesting read on the history of Berber carpet click here.
Berber carpet repair is often needed due to a snag in a Berber carpet or a pull in a Berber carpet. A pull in a Berber carpet happens when one or more threads get caught, either in a vacuum or some other way. Often times it’s the family pet or a child that pulls Berber carpet and creates the snag or run.
If there is just one Berber carpet row that has been pulled, it can be re-burled (glued back into place). If the Berber carpet run is more serious, say for example a dog was trapped in a room and tried to dig her way out, then a patch is in order.
If your Berber carpet is loose then it will need to be stretched. Stretching Berber carpet is not really any different than stretching carpet of any other type.
Carpet Seam Repair:
If a carpet comes apart at the seam it can be repaired in several different ways. One way is to glue it back together, another way would be to remove the old seam tape and do the entire seam over. If the seam that came apart is on a Berber carpet then it becomes a bit more challenging.
A seam needs to withstand a lot of use, and do so for many years. This is one place where it really makes sense to use the best products available. One thing you definitely should not use is the cheap two-sided carpet tape that some web sites sell. It won’t last.
Repairing Pet Damaged Carpet and Pet Urine Problems:
Repairing carpet that’s been damaged by a dog or a cat may be as simple as using a solution to remove the stain and odor. Or it may require much more, such as removing carpet and replacing it with a patch, or even going deeper by removing and replacing the carpet padding and cleaning and deodorizing the floor below the carpet, the tack strip, and even the baseboard.
Repairing Flood Damaged Carpet:
When a room becomes flooded, most often we will remove the padding, dry out the carpet and then replace the padding with new carpet pad. In most cases the tack strip does not need to be replaced. A flood damaged carpet can mildew quite quickly so it’s important to take quick action.
Reinstalling Carpet After Remodeling:
Removing, replacing, or installing new built-in furniture, walls, floor heaters, toilets, cabinets, and other fixtures are just a few reasons that a carpet installer will need install the carpet properly into the room. This will require some new tack strip and possibly some new carpet and pad to add to the area. Many times the customer will have some carpet left over from the installation. If not, we can often take carpet from the closet.
Removing Carpet and Carpet Pad:
Removing carpet and carpet pad is simple but sometimes strenuous. If we are trying to save the carpet to use in a different room or to re-carpet the hallway or stairway, we will want to try to keep it in one piece. If the objective is just to remove old carpet and old carpet pad, we will make it easy on ourselves by cutting the carpet into strips approximately two feet wide.
Sometimes we charge to haul the carpet and pad away but most often we leave it in garbage bags for the customer to feed into their garbage can over a period of a few weeks (no charge).
Repair Stair Carpet:
The first stair always wears out first. One way to save a LOT of money is to use a scrap of leftover carpet from the installation or from a closet to replace just a stair or two.
If more stairs need to be re-carpeted, and if the stairway carpet matches the carpet in the hall and the rest of the house, you can save a LOT of money by replacing the stairway carpet with carpet removed from a different room. It’s far less expensive to replace just one room of carpet than to re-carpet your entire house, and the stairway carpet continues to match the carpet in the hall and the rest of the house.
Carpet Stain Removal:
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of products that you can use to remove stains from your carpet. If you want some great tips on how to remove carpet stains click here.