Installing your own carpet can be very risky if you do not know what you are doing. Your warranty can be voided if the carpet is not installed by a certified installer. You will need much more than just a roll of carpet and a pair of shears. The level of difficulty of a do-it-yourself carpeting project is "advanced" and if you aren't a very experienced handyman, you might want to have a certified professional carpet installer do the job.

Preparing for Carpet Installation

The room or rooms to be carpeted first needs to be measured, and then the carpet itself needs to be measured so that there is four to six inches excess added to every dimension of every piece of carpet. The carpet then needs to be purchased and transported to the site of the installation. The necessary tools and supplies need to be assembled or rented. Baseboards, thresholds, floor registers, and other structural things bordering the future carpet will need to be removed. The old carpet needs to be removed. The padding and the old tackless strips that were under the carpet need to be checked to see if they need to be replaced with new padding or tackless strips. If necessary, these may also have to be removed. The base floor needs to be prepared after the old carpet is removed to be ready to receive the new carpet. This involves cleaning, sanding, paint stripping, removing old adhesive, or whatever is needed to prepare the base flooring for the new padding and carpet.

Installing the Tackless Strips and the Padding

Once the floor is prepared, the strips of tackless strip are fastened to the floor along the edges of the floor so that there is a narrow margin between the strip and the wall, and so that the tackless strip runs continuously along the entire edge where carpet and wall will meet. This margin or gap should be wide enough that the edge of the carpet can be tucked into it, so you will want the width of the gap to be at most the thickness of the carpet. This is usually about one quarter to one half of an inch. The tackless strips themselves must have the diagonal sharp points facing the wall and pointing toward the floor. After the strips are in place, the padding is laid. These are trimmed so that the edges overlay the tackless strips by an inch or two. Smooth out any wrinkles and make sure the padding is laying flat. Then the edges of the padding are cut carefully so that the edges of the padding are flush with the inside surfaces of the tackless strips and with any seams with other pieces of the padding, if any. Seal the padding edges to the strips with duct tape, as well as any seams in the padding.

Laying the Carpet

The carpet needs to be laid on top of the padding so that the two or three inches of excess at the edges of the carpet pieces fold up against the wall. Trim the edges of the seam flush with each other with a seam cutting tool, or by cutting through both thicknessses of carpet between the edges of the overlap with a knife and a straightedge. Then seal any seams with glue strips under the seams and a glue iron, pressing the edges together flush with each other as you go. Use a rolling pin to make sure the seam lies flat. In the corners of the room, a slit or notch can be cut to allow the edges at the corners to lie flat against the wall, but care must be taken to cut these corners carefully so that you do not cut into the part of the carpet that will remain on the floor. Once laid, the carpet needs to be stretched so that any wrinkles and slack in the carpet are pulled out. This is done by using a knee kicker and a power stretcher, which are tools which can be rented for that purpose. After the carpet is stretched, fold the excess edge of the carpet back and use a chalk line to guide where to cut the edge of the carpet so that the edge overlays the tackless strip by about the height of the tackless strip, and cut with a carpenter's knife guided by a straightedge. Then use a chisel and a hammer to tuck the edges of the carpet into the space between the wall and the tackless strip, so that the angled nails in the tackless strip grip the edge that is tucked in.

Finishing Touches

After the carpet is laid, re-install the baseboards, thresholds, doors, registers, or any other item that was removed to allow the carpet to be laid. New transitions to adjacent flooring may be necessary, such as at the edge between the carpet in one room and a different kind of flooring in the room on the other side of the door. In fact, doors may have to be trimmed off at the bottom to allow for the height of the pile of the new carpet, so that the doors can swing freely over the new carpet.