Materials you'll need:

• Carpet Scraps of timber
• Underlay Doorway strips
• Tackles fittings Carpet tape
• Nails Wood filler
• Wood filler Wood glue

Tools you'll need:

• Hammer
• Putty knife or pointed tool
• Measuring tool
• Stapler
• Utility knife or scissors
• Knee-kicker (carpet stretcher).

Today, many carpets are laid by the “tackles” method. This does not mean that no tacks are used, but rather that they are unseen because they are underneath the edges of the carpet. The battens to fix the carpet come in lengths of about 1.2m with spikes sticking out at about 60 degree angle. These battens are nailed to the floor about 6mm out from the wall, with the nails facing the wall. The battens can also be glued to concrete floors.

To lay the carpet:
1. Move furniture out of the room and take any doors off their hinges.

2. Prepare the floor, ensuring it is warp free and nails are hammered flat or removed. Nail down any loose floorboards and fill any wide cracks with wood filler or scraps of timber coated with glue and hammered in between the floorboards. Concrete floors must be level to prevent excess wear on carpet.

3. Nail or glue the tackles fittings all the way around the room except doorways. Fix them a little way out from the wall with the nails pointing to the wall.

4 Install the underlay by stapling or tacking it to the floor. Position so it meets the front edge of the battens, trimming it as needed.

5 Unroll the carpet, centring it in the room. Use a knee-kicker or carpet stretcher to stretch the carpet taut over the tackles battens. Ensure the nose of the knee-kicker is facing downwards so it hooks the carpet onto the spikes of the battens.

6 Trim the carpet, leaving about 1cm overlap beyond the tackles fitting, all the way around the room.

7 Use a pointed tool such as a putty knife to push the excess carpet down between the wall and fitting. If too much carpet has been trimmed off at any point, lift it off the fitting at that point and stretch it again.

8. Finally, fix special doorway strips to hold the carpet in place here. Most such bars have a metal edge -the carpet slips under the edge which is tapped down so it grips the carpet.

9 Replace doors, trimming the bottom edge if necessary to clear the new floor height.