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Overheard a guy at the supply house say seams are just for show
I was grabbing glue at the Supply Plus in Phoenix yesterday and this older installer told his apprentice that seams are just for show and the real work is in the padding. It got me thinking because I've always stressed about perfect seams but maybe I'm overthinking it. Does anyone else focus more on the prep work underneath or is it all about that top seam?
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eric_murray261mo ago
Jumped into the same trap a few years back. I was so focused on making my seams disappear that I rushed the prep work, ended up with a wavy floor that no amount of perfect seaming could fix. What really changed things for me was spending an extra 20 minutes making sure the subfloor was dead flat and the padding had no wrinkles. After that, the seams actually came out BETTER because the whole surface was solid underneath.
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jennys721mo ago
Build on that thinking. A perfect seam is like frosting on a cake, sure it looks nice but if the cake underneath is bad nobody's gonna eat it. The padding and prep work hold everything together and smooth out the little mistakes you make on top.
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Oh man, that cake analogy is spot on, isn't it? But here's what I'm wondering about that prep work you mentioned - when you say "dead flat subfloor" do you mean you're checking across the whole room with a straightedge, or are you just hitting the high spots where the seam will land? Because I've seen guys skip checking the middle of the room (thinking "it's not where the seam is, who cares") and then you get that weird dip that shows up three months later when the furniture settles. Like, what's your cutoff for what counts as flat enough before you start laying down the padding?
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