While it seems obvious to most people that the tacks of a piece of tack strip should point away from the middle of the room (towards the wall) it isn’t too obvious to some people that install carpet.
Recently while stretching carpet in a bedroom of a home in Vancouver I just couldn’t get the carpet to stay stretched, after looking at the tack strip that holds the stretch I noticed it had been installed wrong, the tacks were pointing towards the centre of the room. So every time the carpet was placed on the tack strip it didn’t grip and the stretch was lost.
I could have kicked myself for not seeing this right away. Having the tack strip installed wrongly like this is so unusual that it does not even cross your mind that this could be the problem, so after trying to get the carpet stretched a couple of times I just had to check under the carpet. This problem slaps you across the face when the tack strip is looked at.
Hey, everyone makes a mistake once in a while so I fixed it and moved on. That doesn’t explain why the other room was exactly the same, and after stretching this 5 year old carpet to get rid of the wrinkles this homeowner has carpet that finally looked new!
Here’s hoping you don’t have the same problem,
Chris
