Walked into a job in Phoenix today where the previous guy had stretched the carpet in the wrong direction

3 comments

3 Comments

Huh, I used to think you could kinda "fudge" carpet direction to hide floor problems, but reading your take about the wavy look and off grain really changed my mind. That makes total sense now, it's just a sloppy shortcut that creates more problems.

taylor_wells11d ago

Stretched the carpet in the wrong direction" - that's a new one for me. Maybe the guy thought he was being clever and trying to match the grain of the sunlight or something. Take this with a grain of salt, but I wonder if the house was built on a slab that had a weird dip in it and he was trying to hide it.

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aaronroberts11d ago

You stretched carpet into a high spot once and it just fights you the whole way, so I bet that dip theory is spot on. Some contractors will do anything to avoid fixing the real problem underneath, like leveling the slab or adding a proper underlayment. They think a few extra inches of stretch will hide a low spot but it just makes the carpet look wavy and off grain. It's a shoddy shortcut that ends up looking worse than if they had just been honest about the floor needing work.