scratched paint

appreciate your opinion on this...

we had 2 bedrooms carpeted...

my wife spent evenings painting so everything was done before carpet arrived

as they rolled out the carpet, which ran up the wall on 1 side, it scratched a few spots about 10'' long...
also as they were cutting it in, a lot of the baseboard was scratched by the backing on the carpet.

Is this unavoidable?

what can be done to protect walls/trim?

my wife got home from work & was upset that she has a lot of touching up to do

[Darren Ramey]

Scratches up the wall are avoidable (not that I've never done it) if you are careful. Scratched baseboards are going to happen in a lot of cases. It depends on the type of carpet, the quality of the paint, how long it's cured, and even how cold it is outside. When carpet gets cold it can get extremely stiff and the stiffer it is, the more damage it seems to do. Most carpet backing feels a lot like sandpaper. There is a newer backing called sofback that eliminates a lot of the scratching, but it has it's own issues. On new construction, a contractor assumes the painter will have to do some touching up. In most residential work the paint has cured long enough that scratching isn't as big a problem.

Now I'm sure someone is going to jump in and say that they always mask off every single surface in a house that the carpet backing might come in contact with but not many installers can get away with charging enough to do that sort of thing.

[Daniel Wachtel]

Alot of things can happen during a carpet installation. not that we are not a careful bunch, but lets face it, with modern carpet backings it is like unrolling twelve foot wide roll of sandpaper. Care must be used to keep the carpet off of the paint. Painted baseboards can be a real problem, especially if it was painted over a gloss paint or glossy varnish.

[Floorguy]

Wall papered bathrooms are the worst. After protecting corners and walls, You have to stratigically fold the cut up and open it like a blossoming flower.

I'm echoing Darren on this subject.

[Daris Mulkin]

No matter how careful you are there are going to be touch ups. Like everybody ahead of me has said, we are handling a 12-15 foot wide roll of extemely coarse sand paper. I have even enclosed the room in cardboard until it was ready to cut in and pulled the cardboard and still got scatchs when tucking in.
As Daniel said if the pain was over old glossy paint or varnish then the paint will peel off extremely easy. You can do it with your finger nail. It also takes 2 weeks for paint to fully cure and harden.
Sorry if you have scratchs but it is best to keep some paint in the bottom of the bucket.
Without seeing the walls and base it is hard to tell if it was carelessness or to much.

Daris

[Peter Kodner]

Another thing not mentioned yet. All carpet is figured with the breadths longer than the room. 3" is usually the minimum. This allows for a wall trimmer to have material to bite into. The quarter round/shoe and/or is going to be rubbed with the carpet back which cannot be prevented and is part of any carpet installation. If the marks are higher up on the wall, that may be a different story.

[Dave]

registered now...

thanks for the replys...

I wasn't overly concerned...as you said, the paint was only a week old in one room & days in the other
She did have paint left, so it only took a little while to touch up the baseboards...it probably took longer for her to lay down a protective cover on the carpet.

thanks again