Carpet Legends: Way Back When

(Cartoon: Back in '49. Copyright 2011 by Troy Johnson)

I was doing a carpet repair last week and the customers' 10 year old girl was completely fascinated.  Her younger brother had stuffed a toy in the bathroom sink drain and someone had turned on the faucet and left it running.  By the time it was discovered the carpet and pad were flooded in a 10' radius that included the adjoining bedroom and most of the hall next to the bathroom.  

Every phase of putting it back together elicited a series of questions from the youngster.  Particularly fascinating was putting the doorway seams back together between hall and bedrooms.  

Sometimes we adults run through the ordinary events of the day and don't pay much attention to the modern advancements in the materials we work with.  Using a hot seam iron to melt the seam tape below the carpet was a very intriguing idea to her.  Relating it to her working with a glue gun made it hit home more.   

Incidentally, the carpet seam tape in the door ways was mostly removable by hand without the use of an iron. This was largely due to a lower grade seam tape with less thermoplastic adhesive, and inconsistent transfer of the glue from tape into the backing.  Ideally, as a sign of a good glue transfer,  it would have been necessary to remove the seam tape by placing the iron on the underside of the thermoplastic tape to reheat the glue before removing.  

Even with less than ideal installations, it is a remarkable thing to quickly and effectively secure carpet seams with the use of thermoplastic seam tape.   And in the back of my mind I can hear a now retired 70 year old former carpet installer telling me how it used to be when he was installing carpet. 

Troy Johnson
The Carpet Fix
Carpet Repairs and Installation in the DFW area
214-962-8846

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