Carpet to Floor Transitions and Carpet to Tile Transitions

A carpet to floor transition is any place where your carpet and other flooring meet. Without a smooth transition, you can have a trip hazard or worse, it just looks plain ugly…and who wants that?!

When you call us to put in a new transition, we show up at your home or office with everything we need to do any type of transition, including carpet-to-tile transition, carpet-to-linoleum transition, carpet-to-wood floor transition or any other type of carpet-to-floor transition.

We will do it right the first time and back it up with our 100% Unlimited, Unconditional Lifetime Labor Guarantee.

The short carpet-to-tile video tutorials below will give you a good idea of how to do it yourself if you’d like to give it a try…or just call us now and we’ll come do it for you. It’s what we do!



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View Video

Carpet Stretching Tutorial

VIDEO NOTE: There’s a little background noise because it was taken on-site at a customer’s home.

Part One of a carpet-to-tile transition tutorial.

Part Two of a carpet to tile transition

100% Unlimited, Unconditional Lifetime Labor Guarantee!

This carpet to floor transition is unique for a couple of reasons. First it’s curved and second the wood is thick so we needed to use shims.

Using shims to make the carpet the same height as the floor is necessary in some situations.

Using carpet shims to make the carpet the same height as the floor is necessary in some situations.

This carpet to floor transition is finished and the customer is completely satisfied.

This is a carpet to tile transition.

The customer just installed some new stone tile and needed me to do the transition for him.

The carpet is cut several inches longer than it needs to be here. I’m going to trim it back, remove the ugly metal strip and then install tack strip into the concrete and finally trim, stretch and tuck in the carpet.

Carpet to tile transitions can be a real problem if you don’t know what you’re doing.

It looks good now!

We get called to finish the carpet for flooring contractors quite often. This is a straight-forward carpet to floor transition.

There’s a concrete floor under it so we begin by nailing concrete tack-strip down, then fill in the carpet padding.

Then we cut the carpet slightly short and stretch it the rest of the way before we tuck it in.

This is a basic carpet to floor transition. The tile is relatively thin so no shims were necessary.

First we checked the tack strip to be certain that is secure, then we trimmed the carpet padding, then we cut the carpet to be the right size. Finally we do a little carpet stretch and then tuck it in.

A good carpet to tile transition will last for as long as the carpet. If the carpet is cut too short there will be a gap between the carpet and the floor. If the carpet is cut too long then the carpet may become loose.

A carpet to tile transition in a doorway.
We often will be called in by a home owner who installed his own tile but doesn’t know what to do with the carpet. We finished it up for him and made his work look good.

After picture of a carpet to tile transition.

The carpet to tile transition shouldn’t need any type of metal showing. Most people like the look of the carpet to tile transition when the carpet meets the tile without anything distracting from the natural beauty of the either the carpet or the tile.

Sometimes we need to do a patch right at the carpet to tile transition. This picture and the following one are two different areas that need carpet patching due to a cat getting locked into each room.

Hey, don’t blame the cat! He just wanted to get out and did the only logical thing…he started digging! It’s one of the things cats do best. And fixing carpet pet damage is one of things WE do best!

We cut some carpet out of a closet and began to patch it into place. First we cut the old, damaged carpet out of the way, then we glue the new piece into place.

This one is a little bit longer. You can see my old glue gun here.

The customer provided some carpet to replace what we took out of the closet. It wasn’t an exact match as you can see. It looks much worse here because the camera has a good flash. In reality, the closet doesn’t have a light in it so you can just barely see the difference in color. It’s not an ideal situation but it’s better than leaving a closet with a missing piece of carpet.

You can still see where the carpet patch is because the color is different but in time, the new carpet will fade and begin to soil.

This patch looks a little bit better because the original carpet is less faded.

If you want to try make a carpet-to-tile transition yourself, here’s a little tutorial I wrote… If you want it done right, you know who to call if you don’t want to worry about it (wink, wink).

• Measure a piece of tack strip to the length of the transition and cut with the stair tool and hammer or hack saw, wearing gloves to avoid the tacks. (I use a hatchet)
• Lay the tack strip so it is 1/4 inch away from the tile and nail it into the floor, making sure the top side tacks are slanted toward the tile. If you are nailing the tack strip into a wood floor then you’ll have no problem at all. If you’re nailing concrete nails into concrete then you may have a challenge. If you don’t have the skill or experience to do this then I recommend that you use a healthy amount of liquid nails to adhere the tack strip to the cement. Give it a day to cure before proceeding to the next step.
• Using a slotted blade knife, trim the padding so that it butts up against the edge of the tack strip. Do not allow the padding to overlap the tack strip, do not leave a gap between the tack strip and the pad.
• Cut the carpet using your slotted blade knife so that it is even with the tile.
• Using the carpet kicker, stretch the carpet to overlap the tack strip by 1/4 inch.
• Secure the carpet on the tacks, pressing firmly to ensure it is fastened. This would be a good time to shoot a few carpet staples through the carpet and into the tack strip below. If you do use staples, be sure that the staples land between the rows of nap and not on top of them. If you staple down the nap you’ll see dents.
• Tuck the edge of the carpet into the 1/4-inch gap between the tack strip and the tile using a the stair tool or putty knife and taking care not to snag and unravel the carpet fibers.
• If you would like to be certain that the carpet will never come up, place a bead of latex glue inside the gap
  between the tack strip and the carpet.