Moving Up In the World

You remember back in April when we stripped the old carpeting off the 2nd-floor stairs? Well, we just now got it replaced.

After six months, we'd gotten used to walking up and down the bare wooden stairs, with no carpet runner. But we knew we wanted to re-carpet them eventually, and we finally found someone to do it. There were some fits and starts and hiccups, but it's finished now and we're very happy with the results.

The first trick is picking out the carpet, which seems easy enough, but whatever we picked would have to be compatible with the, uh, "bold" wallpaper that's alongside the staircase. Finding a color and pattern that didn't clash wasn't easy. We picked a nice dark red color with some gold design in it.

Fortunately for us, the carpet store had just recently installed that very same carpet in someone else's house and had big scraps of it leftover. If we were really lucky, they promised us, we might be able to cover the stairs with the remaining pieces. That would shave several hundred dollars off the price of materials. Bonus!

So Installer #1 came out and took detailed measurements of all the stairs, including making paper templates of some of the oddly shaped ones. Then he goes back to the shop to see if the patterns will fit on the carpet remnants he has. After a few days of noodling on this, he gives up. The carpet store can't say whether the carpet pieces will work or not; it's just too complicated to know for sure. They'll have to get a second opinion from Installer #2.

Installer #2 comes out, takes some new measurements, and declares that yes, it will work. Installation can begin... soon. But on the appointed day, nobody shows up.

Mix-ups and finger-pointing ensue. After a series of delays, installation begins with Installer #2, who turns out to be a great guy. He sings and talks to himself as he works, but he's very thorough and detail-oriented. The first day is spent measuring everything yet again, then installing tack strips and carpet padding. Then he installs the straight run on the bottom stairs - the easy part -- and sews a nice red binding along the edges.

Day Two is spent on the hard stuff: the curved pieces at the top of the stairs. Somehow he figures out how each piece fits together, and how to hide all the seams. On a straight run of stairs (like at the bottom) the carpet is all one piece. But once the stairs curve, each step is a separate piece of carpet, with the pattern turned at a different angle after each step. His job is to make the carpet look like one continuous piece when it's not. Based on the final results, I'd say the man is very good at what he does. Like all experts, he makes it look really easy.

The carpet is held in place with a combination of tack strips, glue, staples, and brass stair rods. The stair rods are mostly decorative, but not entirely. They do actually help hold the pieces in place, and they eliminate the need for additional glue.

Now we're getting reacquainted with walking on carpeted stairs. Give us another six months and we should be used to it.