Old timer in Spokane told me to always stretch carpet before cutting

I was working a living room job up in Spokane last week and this retired installer stopped by to watch. He said I was wasting material by not stretching the carpet tight before I made my final cuts. I tried his method on the next room and ended up saving about 8 percent waste on the whole job. Any other installers find this trick saves them material or is it just for certain carpet types?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige868d agoMost Upvoted

Old timers usually know their stuff for sure. Was he mostly talking about loop pile carpet or did he say it works across the board with any pile?

nancyw978d ago

My buddy Dave (total carpet guy, like he's been doing this since before we had cell phones) swears by the method for any pile except maybe some really thick frieze that's super squishy. He told me once he had a job in a church with loop pile and the old timer he was working with just took one look at it and did the same thing, no special treatment or anything. Dave said it came out so tight you could bounce a quarter off it, which is his weird way of saying it was good. But then he also had a nightmare with some high-end wool loop where they tried the same trick and it just didn't hold the same way. So maybe it's like 90% of the time it works, but you gotta feel it out yourself, you know?

jakel368d ago

Oh man, now I gotta figure out if I've been wasting carpet this whole time or if I just really enjoy buying extra. Guess being bad at stretching means I'm good at supporting the carpet industry.