When the men in white coats come to put me in a padded cell – and if I keep remodeling like this that day will be soon – I want it on the record that I expect density. Got that? Turns out density – not thickness – in padding counts most. And in my padded cell, I want the best.
Terry Hoppe, my carpet installer, is explaining this as he installs new pad in our new pad. (Sorry.) “Regardless of thickness, an 8-pound pad is always better than a 6-pound pad,” says Hoppe, who’s been doing this for 18 years. “If the pad is thick but not dense, the carpet will flex too much underfoot and break down faster.”
I’m trying to process this, but get hung up figuring how you weigh carpet pad, which comes in rolls big as golf greens. Turns out, if you chop up a 6-pound carpet pad and stuff it into a box that measures a cubic square foot, the contents will weigh 6 pounds. The same wonks who came up with that wrote the tax code.
“But you wouldn’t believe how many people put expensive carpet over cheap pad,” he continues.
“Not me!” We know my carpet wasn’t expensive. Given what I had left in my basement budget, I bought carpet a notch above repurposed towel scraps. But, since I was focused on color, texture and price, I don’t remember ordering a pad. I nervously ask, “Did I buy a cheap pad?”
“You’re good,” he assures. “You’re on half-inch 8-pound.”
I sit up a little straighter. “Good thing I knew what I was doing.”
“I picked your pad. You forgot to.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling dense and thick, which I often do as I blunder my way through remodeling. “So let me get this straight: My cheap carpet on this dense pad will wear better than any carpet on a lighter pad.”
“Right.”
“So it’s like fat and muscle,” I say, trying to make this relevant.
“Huh?”
“You can be the same size as someone but weigh more and be stronger because you have more muscle, which is denser than fat. See, there’s this girl at my gym …”
“Something like that,” he says, and goes back to pounding tack strip.
As I mull this, I pick up a scrap of pad, which is made of sweepings from the floors of mattress, tire, salami, tennis shoe and chewing gum factories. The remains are put in a compost heap with disposed ashtray contents, homogenized, run through a large pasta press and sold for $2 a yard.
My phone rings. It’s someone from a company that sent me a 1099 with an extra zero in the compensation box. The IRS thinks the company paid me 10 times more than it did. I don’t want to pay taxes on this non-existent income. If I’d made what they claimed, I would have bought better carpet. The person on the phone, who would make excellent carpet padding, doesn’t get this.
“But our accounting office has already closed the books for last year,” says Ms. Thick and Dense. “We can’t change that now.”
I start to feel a little crazy. Padded- cell crazy. I spin out a scene 40 years from now. I’m in my densely padded cell still having this conversation, and saying: “Ever consider going into the carpet business?”
… Join me next week to find out how to add years to the life of your carpet, even if your family trashes it.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marnijameson.com.
Get a good carpet pad plus a good installer
Besides investing in a good carpet pad, be sure to get a good installation. Here are tips Terry Hoppe recommends for both:
Pick your pad. A lower-profile carpet, like a Berber, works best with a 3/8-inch pad, a short shag with a ½ inch. Both should be dense.
Don’t get hung up on how plush a carpet feels. Ninety percent of foot feel comes from the pad.
Ask the installer if he uses a power stretcher, which makes carpet lie more nicely. The stretcher should have poles for leverage, not spikes, which can damage carpet.
Ask for a layout of your job and note where the installer plans to place seams. Good installers make seams run perpendicular to windows when possible. Seams running parallel to a window show up more because of the way the light hits.
Get more than one bid to compare yardage. Getting a layout also lets you calculate whether someone is selling you too much carpet. When we were buying carpet for this home, the builder’s carpet supplier said we would need 410 yards. We re-calculated and found we only needed 350.
Check tightness. A good job should have no visible ripples or bubbles, and should pass the pluck test: When you pinch and pull the carpet in the middle of the room, it should lift no more than an inch.
Inspect seams. Even the best installers can’t make seams invisible, but they can make them less noticeable. Seams should be flat and not look frayed.
