Had to tear out a whole section of carpet because of one hidden tack strip

I was working on a living room install in an old house near Boise last month and everything was going smooth until I hit a spot where the carpet wouldn't lay flat. Turns out the previous installer had buried a tack strip under the pad about 6 inches from the wall. It took me almost 3 hours to pull up 20 feet of carpet and redo that section. Has anyone else run into weird surprises left by past installers?

3 comments

3 Comments

fisher.charlie2mo ago

My buddy Jake had a similar thing happen in a rental flip over in Nampa. He pulled up the carpet and found a whole pizza box under the pad, still had crusts in it, like someone just sealed it in there for the next guy to find. Took him an extra hour just to clean up the grease stain before he could lay the new pad. Did you find anything weird under yours or just that buried tack strip?

charlie_allen1mo ago

Wait, did he find the pizza box under the pad or actually under the carpet? lol. I had to re-read that twice. @fisher.charlie, I think you might have mixed up the layers a bit. The pad is what sits under the carpet, and the tack strip is around the edges, so finding a pizza box under the pad would mean it was on the subfloor. But then you also mentioned buried tack strip, which doesn't really make sense since tack strips are nailed down on purpose. I'm guessing you meant he found that mess under the carpet itself, not the pad. Either way, that grease stain story is brutal, I would've been so ticked off having to deal with that on a flip. Hopefully he got it cleaned up fast with some degreaser before laying the new stuff down.

the_blair2mo ago

Read somewhere that in some old houses people used to bury linoleum or even asbestos tiles under carpets instead of pulling them up. Not quite a pizza box but still a nasty surprise. Grease stain on the pad sounds like a pain to deal with though, hope yours cleaned up alright.