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Used to kick every carpet with my knee, now I use a 75 lb roller and my wrists thank me | Carpet Installers - Discusd

Used to kick every carpet with my knee, now I use a 75 lb roller and my wrists thank me

For my first 6 years in the trade I stretched every room with a power stretcher and then kicked the edges down with my knee, just like the old guys in Tulsa taught me back in 2008. Around 2019 my right knee started clicking on stairs and my wrist would ache after a full day of jab, jab, jab on tack strip. A guy named Ray who ran a crew out of Oklahoma City told me he had not kicked a carpet in 15 years, and he let me try his 75 lb roller for a day on a 40 yard stretch of berber in a rental house. The difference was night and day, the backing laid down flat in one pass and I did not have to kneel and beat the seam edges into place. Now I still power stretch first, then roll every inch before I trim, and my knee stopped swelling up by Friday afternoon. Only thing I still kick is a small closet or a doorway transition where the roller will not fit. Anyone here still on the knee kick method or did you switch to a roller and never look back?

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1 Comment

white.alex26d ago

So what happens when you roll that berber seam and the backing still won't lay flat because the stretcher didn't grab right in the first place? I've seen guys roll a whole room and the seam still peeks two months later when the heat kicks on, because a roller just presses down, it doesn't pull the carpet tight across the room the way a good knee kick at the edge does. And that 75 lb roller is a beast to haul up three flights of stairs for a tiny bedroom, plus you're still on your knees pushing the thing. Ray might've had good luck on that one rental, but I've pulled up rolled installs that bubbled at the transitions where the roller couldn't reach anyway. Sounds like you traded one ache for a sore back and a heavier truck.