When we’re discussing carpet stretching with our customers, they commonly want to know if you can you stretch the carpet in a room when there is furniture in it. More often than not, the answer is “yes you can”. Even when it’s not, we have some creative workarounds.
Factors that Impact Moving Furniture for Carpet Stretching or Not
There are a few important factors to deciding whether we can stretch the carpet with furniture present in the room. These typically include the following, which we will dive deeper into later in this article
- What quantity of furniture is there?
- How heavy is the furniture?
- How big are the furniture pieces?
- Where is the furniture located in the room?
How Carpet Stretching Works
Before deciding whether we can stretch an area of carpet with furniture on it, it’s helpful to understand what carpet stretching actually is and what it accomplishes. Customers want to get their carpet stretched when it develops wrinkles or buckling.
To stretch a room of carpet, we first have to pull up the carpet off of the tack strips. Then we use a combination of tools, most important of which is a Power Stretcher.
A power stretcher consists of a series of long poles that brace off of an opposite wall. At the working end of the tool is a large lever that grips the carpet.
Using leverage, we can re-tension the carpet.Professional carpet stretching is a combination of skill and art to do it right. Once the carpet is properly taut, we cut the excess with a utility knife.
We then use a knee kicker to attach the carpet to tack strips that hold the carpet down. Then we tuck it securely against the wall. This completes the carpet repair.
Whether to Move Furniture or Not
At the end of the day, we want to properly stretch your carpet so that you do it once and never have to do it again. In order to do this, it’s all about achieving the right tension and about adequately distributing that tension across the whole area of carpet.
At the same time, we have to be careful to make sure that we don’t cause the carpet to rip at the seams.
Heavy Single Pieces of Furniture
If we can’t achieve that desired tension across the room, or there is a particularly heavy object, we can’t achieve ideal results. The weight of the furniture can potentially cause uneven carpet stretching results.
For example, if our customer has a 500 pound piano, sleigh bed, exercise equipment or pool table in the middle of the room we are trying to stretch the carpet in, this will likely be a problem. Similarly, things like entertainment centers can pose a challenge.
As hard as we try stretch the carpet past extremely heavy items, the large piece of furniture is going to prevent us from stretching the carpet behind the heavy item. The result would be that we are only able to effectively stretch a portion of the room from that direction.
In these circumstances, its usually best to move the heavy piece of furniture when stretching the carpet.
Large Piece of Furniture
While heavy items can be a problem, so too can a significant amount of furniture or large pieces of furniture.
Big furniture items, like a sectional sofa, can make it difficult to know what the condition of the carpet underneath it is. They also can present a challenge in stretching around it because of how much of the room it blocks.
Significant Amounts of Furniture
Trying to stretch carpet in a room filled with a lot of furniture can be tricky to maneuver around. Delicate items like vases and lamps should always be moved to keep them from being knocked over or damaged.
Beyond delicate items, it also makes life easier to move small items like chairs or side tables etc. The fewer items in a room, the easier it is to achieve using the power stretcher from multiple angles to achieve the best stretching.
What to do About Moving Furniture
Often times it’s not feasible for homeowners to move their large pieces of furniture themselves. We bring furniture glides as well as lifting equipment to help.
Sometimes it’s a bit of a juggle, but these allow heavy items to be moved from one side of the room to the other with relative ease.
Depending on how much furniture we need to move, there may be an additional cost to move it.
Whatever you can get out of the way (at the minimum try to move all of the small and/or delicate items) before we arrive, the less expensive the service will be and the better the final stretch will be.
Get in Touch
If you still have questions around can carpet be stretched without moving furniture or if you’d like to book an appointment with us, please give us a call or book an appointment online. We service the greater Denver area.
Or Call: 1-720-233-0761