New carpet for our home? No!
I got my dream house, but I also got a lot of the previous owner's problems. Our house has hard floors except in the 3 bedrooms. Although Kelly and I are loath to carpet (it stains; holds dust, pollen, and mold; must be maintained with an expensive and energy consuming vacuum cleaner; and just looks inferior to the alternatives), there are some advantages to having carpet in the bedrooms. It's warmer in the winter, softer on the feet, and some are just fun to wiggle your toes in.
The problem with our carpet was that each room had some severe stains and large wrinkles/bubbles. As a resource and monetary consideration, we decided that the carpet was not actually bad and that we would keep what we have. To replace carpet requires the manufacture of more synthetic material (read: oil byproduct) if replacing with more carpet, or an expensive and sometimes not-so-renewable (exotic woods) resource if replacing with stone, tile, wood, or concrete. As an aside, I must say that stained concrete is eco-friendly and can be made to look totally awesome! So if your carpet is still functional, but has a few defects, don't get rid of it - fix it! Fixing an existing thing (that is not a power or water consumer) is ALWAYS better than replacing it due to the resources involved in trashing one and buying another.
First, I had to flatten the wrinkles in the carpet. There are two specialized tools to do this, depending on the size of the room, a power stretcher and a knee kicker. Instead of buying a special tool to do a job once or twice, please save the resources needed to produce these tools and borrow one from a friend or rent one from any tool rental location. The power stretcher is a pole with teeth on the end that catches the carpet to be stretched and reaches all the way to the opposite wall. The knee kicker is a short bar with teeth on one end and a large, soft pad on the other that grips the carpet and it kicked to straighten it.The knee kicker is the only device I used. I found this at The Home Depot at $16/24-hours and also the (much needed) stretcher tool kit at $28/24-hours.
Basically, you pull up 3 ends of your carpet, leaving the best end attached to the tacks. Use the stretcher to systematically pull your carpet tight. Cut off the excess. Tuck the edges under the wallboard. Note: I did not do anything with the carpet pad.
To get out stains and spots, you'll need to shampoo the carpet. Steam cleaners, while effective, will shorten the life of your carpet. A carpet shampooer applies soapy water to the carpet and subsequently sucks it back up. Because many people already have a carpet shampooer, your best bet would be to borrow one. There are several places, including H-E-B, that rent them as well. Buying a shampooer is like buying a new car that you plan to use for a road trip and then letting it sit in the garage until your next road trip - it's a waste of resources and money. Because of the phosphates,degreasers, surfactants, and alkalinity, carpet shampoos create waste water that is very difficult to dispose of. Putting it down the drain pollutes our water system and dumping it in the yard is harmful to your plants. There are a variety of biodegradableshampoos on the market now, available, of all places, at Wal-Mart. PLEASE choose abiodegradable shampoo the next time you do your carpet!
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