Rant: A homeowner in Charlotte insisted I skip the tack strip on a stair landing, saying the carpet would 'settle in' on its own.

After arguing for twenty minutes, I gave in and now, three months later, I'm looking at a wrinkled mess that needs a full re-stretch, which taught me to never again let a client's hunch override a basic rule of the trade, so how do you guys handle it when someone pushes back on a standard install step?

2 comments

2 Comments

theagarcia8d ago

Look, I did a whole sunroom in Raleigh last year where the client made me skip the tack strip on a big flat area, and honestly, it's been fine. Sometimes the old school rules are just that, old school. Carpet backing is better now, and a proper pad with a good glue-down perimeter can hold things tight without those strips. Maybe your landing had a different underlayment issue, or the pad shifted. I've seen more jobs messed up by a bad stretch over strips than by leaving them out on a small, contained spot like a landing.

morgan_butler408d agoTop Commenter

Okay, that line about seeing more jobs messed up by a bad stretch over strips really hits home. I used to be a total stickler for tack strips everywhere, no questions asked. But reading what @theagarcia said about that sunroom job, it makes me rethink things. Maybe we do get stuck on how we were taught and miss that materials change. A bad install is a bad install, strip or no strip. If the pad is locked down right at the edges, maybe the strip isn't doing the main work on a small flat spot. You've got a point.