The two edges draw apart and a pale line of underpad shows through the join.
A ridge stands up along the join that you can feel through a sock, usually on a floor that was never pulled tight.
A join held with adhesive across the top lifts again as soon as traffic and heat get to work on it.
Loose tufts unravel along the cut because the edge was trimmed and never sealed.
A join we have repaired is re-cut straight with a row cutter, laid over heat-activated seam tape and bonded with an iron, then weighted while it cools. The cut edges are sealed so the tufts cannot unravel, and the room is stretched before anything is sealed shut. The quick version is a bead of adhesive along the top: nothing re-cut, nothing tensioned, and the same line back within a season.
A carpet seam is a manufactured join between two sheets of broadloom, and when it fails it fails in plain view: a line of underpad showing down a hallway, a ridge you can feel through a sock, tufts unravelling along a cut edge. None of that means the carpet itself is finished.
Most seams that travel are not really seam problems – they are tension problems that surface at the weakest line in the floor. Seams are also planned before the carpet is ever cut, since where a join runs and which way it faces both change how much it shows and how much wear it takes.
Yes. We cut back past the glued strip to clean carpet on both sides, lay fresh seam tape and re-bond the join with an iron. The glued section is the part that has to go.
That is a peaked seam, and it means the carpet is not tight. We power-stretch the room first and re-seal the join afterwards, because flattening the ridge on its own just pushes the slack somewhere else.
Only what sits on the join and a working width either side of it. We shift standard furniture and put it back where it was.
Ontario requires a written agreement for any home renovation work worth more than $50, and a business cannot charge more than 10 per cent above the estimate it gave unless you ask for extra work in writing. You see the figure before anything starts.
Sometimes. If the slack is confined to that bay we work locally, but where the whole room has gone loose the stretch has to come first or the repaired join will open again.
The Carpet and Rug Institute's residential standard requires carpet to be power-stretched into the room, and a floor pulled in with a knee kicker alone carries slack from the first day. That slack gathers at the weakest line, which is the join.
On a heavy carpet the slack shows as the join standing up into a ridge you can feel underfoot.
On a lighter carpet the same slack draws the two edges apart until the underpad shows through.
A join running with the daylight from a window disappears into the pile, while the same join running across the light catches every shadow and reads as a stripe from the doorway.
A join kept out of the main walking line, and out of thresholds where two narrow rooms meet, takes a fraction of the wear.
When the offcut is generous enough we move the seam away from the doorway while we are repairing it, rather than putting it back where it already failed.