Carpet installation in St. Louis, MO

Second floors in city houses are mostly bedrooms, and bedrooms are where carpet still wins. It is quieter overhead in a two-flat, warmer underfoot in a January bedroom against an uninsulated brick wall, and softer for kids and older knees on a steep old staircase. Not every room in a hundred-year-old house needs a hard surface, and carpet remains the least expensive way to finish a floor properly and completely.

It also solves practical problems. Not every original oak floor is worth saving; some have been sanded past the tongue or patched badly, and carpet covers that for a fraction of a replacement. Landlords with units around Tower Grove, Dutchtown and Dogtown use it to turn an apartment fast. Finished basements take carpet tile, which lets you swap wet squares after a bad spring instead of pulling out the entire room.

Under old carpet in a city home there is usually oak, and part of our estimate is pulling a corner back to see what shape it is in. Sometimes the answer is carpet again, and sometimes it changes the whole conversation. Either way the subfloor gets checked for squeaks, loose boards, old staple fields from the last install, and soft spots near radiators or an upstairs bathroom wall.

Basements are a different job. Concrete needs a moisture check and a pad rated for below grade, or you get a mildew smell inside two years. Where water is a real risk we recommend carpet tile with moisture-resistant backing instead of broadloom and pad. Stairs in city houses are narrow, steep and frequently out of square, so treads get measured one at a time and wrapped rather than cut from a rough count.

Erik measures the rooms and the stairs, checks the subfloor, and asks how each space gets used, because a guest room and a basement family room do not need the same product. You get a written price covering carpet, pad, tear-out, haul-away and any transitions. Roll goods are ordered to the seam layout he planned, so seams land where furniture and traffic patterns keep them out of sight.

On install day the crew moves the agreed furniture, pulls the old carpet and tack strip, hauls the debris out, and fixes squeaks and loose boards while the subfloor is open. New tack strip, then pad, then carpet stretched properly with a power stretcher so it stays flat instead of rippling in two summers. Most rooms are finished in a day, and you can walk on it that same evening.