While this is the easiest and most convenient way to go about having a carpet installed in your home, if you find that you are pretty capable of doing this yourself, you can. Here is a small guide on how you can try to install a carpet by yourself:

Materials

The materials you will need when you are planning on doing this job on your own include some things that you will need to rent and some that you will need to buy. The things you need to rent include the following: power stretcher, knee kicker, seam cutter, seam tape, seaming iron, strip cutter, wall trimmer, and seam roller. The items you need to purchase or may already have around the house include the following: stapler, hammer, tackless strips, chalk line, utility knife, rolling pin, measuring tape, knee pads, work gloves and safety glasses. Of course, you will need the carpet and the underpads for the installation.

Procedures

Assuming that you already have a clean floor that is stripped of its old covering or carpet and cleaned of any debris and with all the carpeting tools and materials on hand, you start by laying down the underpad and fastening this down with the use of tackless strips and stapling these down. You can seal the underpad seams with the use of duct tape.

Next thing you need to do after you lay down the underpads is to install the carpet on top of it. You should remember to overlap the edge of your floor with the around four to six inches of carpet for proper installation. Using the measuring tape, start with the longest side of the room and mark the carpet's underside with this measurement plus six inches or so, then cut the carpet by folding it in half and running your utility knife through the two folded halves. Since you measured the carpet with the use of the longest side of the room, you will be sure to have a huge allowance for the shorter side of the room when you cut the carpet.

If the room you are installing the carpet in is wider than the carpets width, you may need to join two lengths of carpet and overlap these. You can use seaming tape to join these two carpet installations and the way to do it is to place the seaming tape adhesive side up under the carpet. You will need to overlap the two carpets first and while making sure that both edges have four to six inches of overlapping carpet on the walls as well as making sure the carpet piles are aligned or run in the same direction, you will then need to feel the edge where the carpets overlap each other and cut through the top carpet with your utility knife or your rented seam cutter. Use a rolling pin to seal the seam. A knee kicker is then used on the edges of the carpet and a carpet stretcher that runs the length of the carpets edge will keep the carpet securely in place.