Customer Reviews

The Carpet Installation Training Handbook

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I work for a property management firm. We just started doing out carpet in house. I searched for installation training as was unable to find any. I even went to many different flooring tool suppliers and I was still unable to come up with any references on the subject. This book is an invaluable training aid for new installers. A follow up video would be great.

This is a good book on how to lay carpet. The carpet on my stairs was wearing out and I wanted to replace it myself from extra carpet I had from the original installation. Eric Larson's book gave me the information to do the job.

I read the rest of the book and, although I did not use the data, the information seemed complete and the instructions were generally clear. It's clear that Eric wrote the book for apprentice carpet installers and I applaud his textbook-like approach with the questions and answers after each chapter. Based on the information contained and the approach used to teach it, I would give the book four to four and a half stars.

My complaint is about the editing, which is attributed to Dr. William G. Burns of San Antonio. The English used in the book is atrocious. Sentences and clauses run together without any punctuation, sort of the way someone would speak in informal speech. Many of the sentences are just fragments, either without a verb or without a subject. Possessive forms do not use an apostrophe (Jacks hammer instead of Jack's hammer). It's clear that this book was written on a word processor and the spell check was used without any human judgment. There are many places in the book where the wrong word is used, but not misspelled. That is, "their" is used where it should be "there". "To" is used when it should be "too". "And" is used when it should be "an" ("three eights of and inch"). The book is riddled with errors of this nature. My favorite is where Eric writes that "...the installer should asses the job..." instead of "assess".

I realize that Eric is a carpet installer and not an English major, and I do not fault him for the poor English usage. I do fault him for not realizing his weakness and finding a better editor, even if that editor would drive him crazy with rewrites and markups. There's simply no excuse for putting out a book, especially one that is to be used as a textbook, with such poor English usage.

However, if you can get past the mangling of the language, the book does have some good information on carpet installation.

This book is thorough enough to teach you, on it's own, how to install stretch-in carpet in your home. I used it to learn what I needed to know to install stretch-in carpet in a basement bedroom with a concrete floor and on my bullnose staircase. Its the only comprehensive carpet installation reference I could find, but luckily, it was all I needed.

As others have noted, it is riddled with misspelling and covers lots of information a DIY carpet installer doesn't need-- like how to dress and how to handle customers. None of that bothered me since it did a fine job teaching me what I wanted to learn.