Some of mine are carpet to carpet, others are carpet to tile. With several of them the carpet has moved/shrunk, exposing a ragged edge. I would like to replace the aluminium strips with wider ones to compensate.
I've tried to gently lever one or two up but they seem very resistant. The floor beneath is concrete to which the strips seem very firmly fixed. Not having much idea how to remove and replace them I'd much appreciate some advice.
Mike Halmarack explained on 16/11/2020 :
They are probably glued down to the concrete and likely a type where the carpet is pushed into a slot which has a sharp series of tangs to retain the carpet at either side.
Rather than removing the existing strip, you might find it more sensible to fit a flat strip joiner over the top. Drilling and fixing with screws through your existing strip.
Thanks harry, that seems like a fairly trouble free solution.
The ones I've removed were nailed into the concrete - presumably hardened steel nails driven in with a nail-gun. The cover strip wasn't reusable after I'd removed it!
Nailed, or sometimes epoxied.
Some of mine on a concrete floor were glued with something like no more nails. As were the carpet edge nail strips.
I once had a house with a solid floor where the carpet bar had obviously come adrift having been glued down. The previous owner had just put a long screw through it, but this appeared to have penetrated a damp membrane, so a bit of digging out and epoxy dribbling was called for.
Chris
There are no nail or screw heads visible on the surface. Maybe the strips come in 2 parts. The bit that gets nailed and a clip
-on top?
Would that not hit doors and cause a trip hazard. Is there nowhere in the house where you can see an end to see what is going on. If its only glue, then I guess getting them off is the least of the worry. If they were in slots and you have a gap it sounds like they were not very well secured. If you can see the carpet edges, surely you can see the edge of the bottom part of the strip? Brian
Brian Gaff (Sofa) explained :
What happens, is that once the carpet gets pushed and secured into the gripper strip, the only way to remove it if the carpet needs lifting, is to rip it off the sharp tangs of the gripper. Thus the carpet end becomes damaged and no longer able to be effectively gripped.
Certainly where some of the doors are concerned.
I'm not great at low altitude these days. Tricky getting down and even trickier getting up again.
Eeek! I don't know if I can stand to hear that there might be worse to come.
I was guessing that the carpet edges were just covered, rather than secured. Though secured will have been a better method.
I can see the carpet edge from above, in the kneeling position. The worms eye view I'll need to limber up for.
Sound reasoning Brian.
So, replacement with a wider strip should do the trick. I just need to thin the edge of my crowbar.
It's fairly easy to make a hardwood threshold strip and then it could be any size you want - they look much better than aluminium and can be stained/varnished/oiled as required. I've been making mine out of reclaimed oak skirting. If you haven't got the tools a local woodworker would do it in a few minutes.
I came a cross a couple of these recently
You need to rip the carpet out somehow from the bits with the spikes then lever up the metal strip with a crowbar and replace it with the wide strip that covers the damaged carpet edges. Some of them have two parts and the upper part is pushed into a groove in the lower part but if a bit of levering doesn't do anything you can conclude it's all one piece
That's a great idea. I really don't like the look of aluminium strips. Most of my woodworking tools are now in Canada but I still have a plane and a saw, so any rabetting for offset levels will be the tricky bit.
The carpet edges are already out so they can't have been very well gripped in the first place. Levering is about to begin.
If machining a rabbet is difficult then you could glue flat sections together to make one ...
Use a bolster chisel to open up the strip.
Aluminium strips can look OK new, but very soon look extremely tatty.
I detest aluminium carpet strips!
In a previous house, we had wooden strips - same width as the door frame. They had been very badly half-painted and had a lot of damage over the years. I managed to get them out, sand down, re-finish, replace. They looked so, so much better. Especially as they were actually nice oak!
On moving to a new-build, got the builder to install similar.
When the carpets either side are different, a wooden strip really helps to stop them looking like a mistake.
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