Basically, there are two types of wall-to-wall car­peting. Conventional carpeting is laid over a sep­arate rubber or foam padding and must be stretched and attached to tackless strips around the perimeter of the room. Cushion-backed car­peting, which has foam bonded to its backing, doesn’t need to be stretched—it’s usually glued down—so it’s generally easier to install. However, it must be destroyed to remove it. Consequently, better-quality carpeting is almost always conven­tional, and that’s the focus here.

Carpeting doesn’t ask much of subflooring, which can be slightly irregular as long as it is dry, solid, and adequately sized (58-in. plywood is typical). Carpeting can be installed over existing wood, tile, resilient flooring, or concrete floors; but check the manufacturer’s recommendations regarding subgrade installations, acceptable gaps in the substrate, padding thickness and type, and so on. Don’t scrimp on padding; buy the densest foam or heaviest rubber padding you can.

CARPETING TOOLS

You can rent most of the specialized tools. To install conventional carpeting you’ll need the following:

► A power stretcher stretches carpeting taut across a room, so it can be secured to tackless strips along opposite walls. Cross­room stretching eliminates sags in the middle of a room. You simply add and adjust stretcher sections to extend the tool.

► A knee-kicker is used in tandem with the power stretcher to lift the carpet edges onto strips, to stretch the carpet in a closet, or to draw the seams closer together before you hot-glue them.

► The stair tool drives carpeting into the spaces between tackless strips and walls and between stair risers and treads.

► A seam iron heats the hot-melt carpet seam tape that joins the carpet sections.

► The row runner, or row-running knife, cuts between the rows of loop-pile carpeting. Many installers use a large, flat-bladed screwdriver to separate the rows first.

► An edge trimmer trims the carpet edges so they can be tucked behind tackless strips; under baseboards; or under transition pieces such as metal carpet doors, which are used in doorways or where dissimilar flooring materials meet.

► Seam rollers can be either star wheeled (spiked) or smooth; they press the carpet edges onto the hot-melt seam tape to ensure a strong bond. Use a smooth roller for cut-pile carpets and a star roller for loop-pile carpets.

► Miscellaneous tools include a utility knife with extra blades, aviation snips to cut tackless strips, a hammer, a stapler if you’re applying padding over plywood, a notched trowel if you’re installing padding over concrete, heavy shears, a chalkline, a tape measure, and a metal straightedge to guide utility-knife cuts.

ESTIMATING CARPET

Carpeting comes on factory rolls whose standard width is 12 ft.; a handful of carpet manufacturers offer widths of 13 ft. 6 in. or 15-ft. Plan on cover­ing most of the room with a large piece of carpet 12 ft. wide, then covering the remaining spaces with smaller pieces joined to the large piece with hot-melt seam tape. Professional installers call the full-width piece of carpet the drop; the smaller pieces are called the fill. Joining carpet seams is time consuming so choose a layout that mini­mizes seams.

Start by measuring the room’s width and length at several points; then make a sketch of the room on a piece of graph paper. A 14 in. to 1 ft. scale is a good size to work with. On the sketch, include closets, alcoves, base cabinets, floor registers or radiators, stairs, doorways, and so on. Also note the location of doors and windows, particularly the main entrance into the room. Carpet pile should slant toward the main entrance, so that a person entering the room looks into the carpet pile.

Carpet seams and edges must be trimmed, so

factor that into your estimate. Add 3 in. for seamed edges, and allow 6 in. extra for each car­pet edge that runs along a wall. Stair carpet pile

An ideal layout minimizes waste and seams, positions seams away from traffic, and orients carpet pile so that someone entering through the main entrance looks into the pile. Carpet comes in 12 ft.-wide rolls (also called bolts), so 41 RF (running feet) of carpet would allow enough extra for trimming edges in this 16 ft. by 25 ft. room.

nail the strips or to stretch carpeting behind or under such obstacles. To anchor carpet edges in doorways, you can use a metal carpet bar, which has angled barbs like a tackless strip, as shown in "Carpet Transitions,” on the facing page. Or you can install a hardwood threshold to provide a clean edge to butt the carpet to, after first anchoring it to a tackless strip, or folding the car­pet under about 1 in. and nailing down that hem.

Some flooring materials are adhered only along the edges (perimeter bond), whereas others are completely glued down (full-spread adhesion). Flooring secured by full-spread adhesion is less likely to migrate or stretch and hence is more durable. Follow the installation instructions that come with your flooring. Be sure your supplier provides the manufacturer’s instructions on adhesion and seaming methods that may be unique to your resilient flooring.

Full-spread adhesion. After the resilient floor­ing is final-trimmed in place, it is typically lapped back halfway, exposing roughly half the area underneath. Using a square-notched trowel, spread a compatible adhesive on about half the floor. Unroll the lapped portion down into the adhesive, and immediately use a 100-lb. roller on the material to spread the adhesive and drive out bubbles. Roll across the material’s width first, then along its length. Next to the walls, use a

hand seam-roller to seat the material in the adhe­sive. Repeat the process with the second half of the sheet. If you get adhesive on the face of the flooring, clean it off at once, using a cleaner recommended by the manufacturer. (Most glues clean up with water.)

Seaming edges. If one sheet of flooring doesn’t cover the entire floor, you’ll have at least one seam edge. Here, be sure to follow the manufac­turer’s instructions on seam spacing and adhesive applications between individual sections, called drops. For example, manufacturers indicate how far back from the edges to apply adhesive and whether the seams should be butted together or overlapped and double-cut through both layers.

Although manufacturers tell you to butt vinyl seams tightly, you’ll need to leave a hairline gap between the sections of Marmoleum, which con­tracts along its length and expands across its width. Also, linoleums tend to expand slightly because of the moisture in the adhesive.

To transfer the outline of the room to the resilient flooring, place a blade of the framing square on the scribed line and run a utility knife along the outside edge of the blade, as shown in the photo on the facing page. The mark made by the utility knife—112 in. beyond the scribed line—represents the cut-line you’ll make in the resilient flooring. But the utility knife should score the flooring
only about one-third deep. After you’ve scored with the utility knife, use a hooked knife to cut all the way through, with the scored line guiding the hooked knife. Hold the hooked knife at a slight angle, so it undercuts the edge. At some point, you’ll also trim off the flooring’s factory edge, which protects the material in transit.

Once you’ve cut the outline, remove the paper template and loosely roll the flooring with its back facing out. Carry it to the room to test its fit. If you need to retrim the flooring to make it fit exactly, you’re in good company. Professional installers always assume they’ll trim because no template measurement is ever 100 percent accu-

rate. When you’re satisfied with the flooring’s fit and final position, use a pencil to draw set marks on the underlayment, so you’ll know exactly where the sheet edge should be when you lap the sheet (roll it back on itself) to apply adhesive.

Bring resilient flooring sheets onto the job site at least 24 hours before working with it, so it has time to acclimate to room temperatures (at least 68°F) Resilient materials are more pliable when they have warmed and less likely to crimp or crease. As you roll and unroll resilient sheets, be careful not to crimp the material, which could crease its surface and be visible forever after.

There are several ways to transfer a room’s dimensions to resilient flooring sheets, but none so accurate as creating a template, especially if there are refrigerator alcoves or base cabinets to work around. Create the template with 15-lb. felt paper, which is inexpensive and, being stiffer than rosin paper, is not likely to tear as you trans­fer the room’s outline to the resilient flooring. Using a utility knife, rough-cut pieces of the paper so they approach within 1 in. of all walls, cabinet bases and the like. Beyond that, don’t agonize about fitting the paper too accurately. That is, the paper doesn’t need to butt against walls and cabinets because the scribing tools will span small gaps between the edge of the paper and the perimeter of the room. If the jaws of the scribing tool are 1 ‘A in. wide, they will scribe a guideline onto the paper that is uniformly 112 in. away from the base of walls, cabinets, etc.

As you roll out individual pieces of paper, overlap their edges about 2 in. and use duct tape to join them. Once you’ve covered the floor with felt paper, use a utility knife to cut small (2-in. by

5- in.) boat-shaped holes in the paper every 3 ft. to 4 ft., as shown in the top right photo on p. 504.

As you cut each boat-shaped hole, cover it with duct tape, which adheres through the holes to the subfloor. This will keep the paper from moving as you scribe the perimeter of the room.

Many installers use a scribing tool or a com­pass set at about 112 in. to trace the shape of the
room and cabinets onto the paper to create a template that they will later transfer. But the installer shown on the following pages preferred a small framing square and a pin scribe. The 112-in. width of a framing square’s blades (legs) ensured a uniform scribing distance, and the square fit easily under the cabinet toekicks. Holding one edge of the square flush to the wall, he ran the point of the pin scribe along the other edge— scribing a light line in the felt paper 1 ‘A in. away from the wall. Because the square’s blades are straight, along curved surfaces he moved the square often, making a number of scribe marks to indicate the arc of the curve.

It’s okay to use several sections of felt paper if a room is large or unusually complex. In this case, be fastidious about marking section edges so you can reassemble and tape them to the resilient sheeting before transcribing the room outline. On a room of any size, you’ll probably need to use several sheets of resilient flooring as well. (Sheet widths vary from 6 ft. to 12 ft.) Important: When you’re done scribing, gently lift the template—but leave the duct tape stuck to the paper. Loosely roll up the template and carry it to the room where the resilient sheet has lain unrolled on the floor, face up, to warm and flat­ten. Line up template edges to trimmed flooring edges. Then carefully unroll the template so it lies flat atop the resilient material (Step 4). Press down the “boats” so the duct tape sticks to the resilient flooring, anchoring the template.