That hotel hallway carpet job in Phoenix still bugs me

Last month I walked through a new Marriott in Phoenix and the carpet seams were showing every 6 feet down the hallway. You could see the tape lines clear as day under the hallway lights, looked like they stretched it instead of power stretching it properly. I checked the pile direction too and it was opposite on every other roll, which is why it looked so patchy. How do you guys handle long hallway runs when the pattern repeat is barely visible, do you just trust the arrows on the backing? Has anyone else run into a big commercial job where the spec sheet said one thing but the installer clearly rushed the stretch?

1 comments

1 Comment

keith_henderson18d ago

Wait, is this really keeping you up at night? I mean, yeah, bad seams are annoying if you’re the guy who has to look at them every day, but most guests are just trying to find their ice machine. That said, checking the pile direction on a big commercial job is fair game, because if the lighting is harsh, it’ll look like a checkerboard from hell, and that’s on the installer, not the carpet. But honestly, with a barely visible pattern, I’d rather trust the arrows on the backing than my own eyeballs, since those arrows are usually stamped by the mill for a reason. The tape line thing though, that’s just laziness, you can’t stretch a 12 foot wide roll tight with a knee kicker, so either they skipped the power stretcher or the subfloor was so wavy they gave up. I’d bet the spec sheet called for a certain stretch and they just pulled it hand tight, because that’s what happens when you pay by the yard, not the hour.