Basement Floor Covering

The basement floor covering should be the last project of your basement renovations. The floor covering and design often sets the mood of the room. Some designers call the floor “The fifth wall of the room”

Carpets.

Although tile maybe durable. Wood is traditional. Vinyl is low maintenance and also colorful. Still, there is nothing like

walking on carpet on a cold day.

Tools For Laying The Carpet

* Strip cutters - for cutting strips which fit around the perimeter of the room.

* Knee kicker and/or power stretcher - for stretching the carpet

* Staple hammer - for stapling the underlay to wood.

* Seaming iron - to join pieces of carpet with seaming tape.

* Utility knife - to cut excess carpeting around corners and doorways.

* Carpet trimmer - to trim edges along walls.

Laying Jute-back carpet

Before you lay your basement floor covering, you must prepare the room by removing all furniture, baseboard, doors (optional) and any other items that can interfere with the project.

On wooden floors, level any high spots with a planer or a floor sander.

Fill all wide cracks and dips with floor leveling compound. If the floor is badly worn, then you’re better off to lay an underlayment.

Joining the seams:

- Unroll the two pieces of carpet on the floor to be carpeted or better yet, a large enough area to make the seam without having to trim down the ends.

- Once both pieces are unrolled, over lap the meeting ends and use a strait edge to cut through both overlapping pieces.

- Next fold back one end of the meeting ends about a foot and mark a line

along the other edge to be glued. This will be the reference line to place the seaming tape in the middle of the carpet seam.

- Now lay the tape center on the line. Using a seaming iron, start gluing the two ends of the carpet to the tape making sure that they are tight together. Installing the tackless strips - Use a heavy object like a tool box to apply weight to the joint. After two minutes, move on and repeat the same procedure every two feet or so.

Most carpets are stretched and held down to the floor by tack strips which fits around the perimeter of the room.

Install the tackless strips around the perimeter of the area to be covered. Leave 3/8” to 1/2” space from the wall with the pins pointing towards the wall and away from you.

Once the tackstrips are nailed in place, you can lay the padding within the framework

Note: - If the carpet is joining a room with a different basement floor covering, such as wood floor. Then you will nail a special metal threshold with grippers.

- If you must join seams, it’s best to join them before you lay the padding otherwise you will cut through the padding.

- If the new carpet is meeting another carpeted room. Seam the two ends with seam tape.

Once the strips are nailed in place, you can lay and secure the padding with the slick

membrane facing up. Use a sharp blade and cut the padding to fit within the framework of the strips.

If the floor is concrete, you must glue the padding with pad adhesive.

Roll back the padding and glue the padding to the cement floor one section at a time.

- Lay the carpet on the floor to be carpeted and stretch the Capet with a knee kicker.

- Use a piece of wood or a rubber mallet to connect the ends to the strips.

Use a sharp utility knife or a trimmer to neatly trim off the extra Capet.

- Finish off the room by installing the baseboard.