How easy is it to take up and relay a stair & landing carpet? I want to put down a carpet now and take it up in a year's time when I want to paint my bannisters. Alternatively I could leave the carpets off until we have done all the painting but this means living without a carpet for quite a while until we get around to doing the painting.
Removing and relaying a carpet which has been properly fitted and down for some time is pretty easy - much more so than starting from scratch. However, stairs are probably the most difficult.
The important thing is how you store the carpet so it doesn't get stretched - roll it up and tie or tape, then store somewhere where it won't get stood on, etc.
My parents recently had their stair carpet replaced. The original was all cut into sizes of 2 stair lengths and attached with gripper rod. It certainly looked like all the one carpet. It would have made putting it back a doddle.
Steven.
As long as the landing carpet is held down by gripper rods, it's pretty easy to pull it up (starting at a corner) and put it back. It will help if you buy a knee kicker (I think Screwfix do one for about 30 quid now) which makes it easy to stretch the carpet back onto the grippers.
The stair carpet should be fitted with one gripper rod near the bottom of each riser and another near the back of each tread - with the spikes pointing towards each other. It can be pulled out - a step at a time - with a sharp tug. When you put it back, use a blunt bolster chisel to force it back into the corners. [Don't use grippers made out of flimsy metal angle, with the 'spikes' pressed out of it. At best, that's only good for one application. Use proper wood and nails gripper rod - as used on the floors].
I've had my stair and landing carpets up several times over the years, and they always go back ok by using these methods.
away from each other?
No, because then the carpet would slip off. The spikes need to pull the carpet *into* the corner.
Owain
No towards each other. Each strip of gripper rod should be pointing towards the corner of each stair i.e. towards each other.
If they pointed away from each other then the gripper rod would have no effect at all.
No - think about it!
On a flat floor, the spikes need to be angled towards the wall so that trying to pull the carpet away from the wall makes it grip tighter.
Translate that into a stairs situation, and the spikes need to be angled towards the concave corner between the back of the tread and the bottom of the riser. The spikes on the horizontal and vertical rods are thus angled
*towards* each other.Fit them the other way round if you insist - but the carpet will then fall off!
The original description was not as clear as it could be. Having described a single section of carpet "with one gripper rod near the bottom of each riser and another near the back of each tread" the second clause "with the spikes pointing towards each other" might be taken to refer to the same pair of grippers. Not a 'pair' composed of adjacent riser tread pairs
Anyone familiar with gripper rod would have to try very hard to mis-understand my original description. A single gripper rod is just that - not a pair - and it has spikes angled in only one direction. So having spikes pointing towards each other necessarily involved *both* of the rods to which I had referred.
Exactly. If you're talking about that single piece of carpet then the pair of grippers that hold it in place point away from each other.
Even if you use a 'runner' on stairs (good idea as you can move it to equalise wear) the grippers are still in the same orientation as single pieces.
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