Got burned by a bad seam roller at a hotel job in Portland

Was working a big commercial lobby install last Tuesday and my cheap seam roller started leaving marks on the carpet. Cost me 3 extra hours of touch-up work that I could've avoided. Anyone else had a tool fail at the worst possible moment?

3 comments

3 Comments

shaneb1616d ago

Blew past the damage control part - what kind of marks were we talking about? Was it that roller leaving those little crescent moon shaped dents or was it scratching the backing material? I've seen both and they're totally different problems to fix. The crescent marks you can sometimes roll back out with a heavy roller and some steam, but if it's scratching the backing that's a whole new carpet install situation. Just trying to figure out if you could've saved that time or if it was a total loss.

ruby45016d ago

and then you look down and realize it's the backing that's all torn up... oh man, that's the nightmare scenario right there. @shaneb16 I think you're onto something with the crescent marks being fixable sometimes, but once you mess with the backing it's pretty much game over for that section of carpet. I've seen guys try to steam and patch it but it never looks right, you know? Three extra hours on a commercial lobby install sounds about right if you had to pull up and relay anything. That's the kind of mistake that makes you want to throw your tools in the river and start over.

jenny_coleman14d ago

Oh man you're totally right. Had a job last year where we nicked the backing on a stretch of Berber and we tried everything to fix it but the customer could still see the line no matter what we did. Ended up having to rip out a whole 12-foot section and redo it from scratch. That's the kind of mistake that just haunts you for the rest of the day. Have you ever had to explain to a homeowner why their brand new carpet suddenly has a patch in it?