I’m looking for advice about my upcoming carpet installation.
A year or two ago, a phone company contractor installed a new phone jack in my upstairs home office. He wired the new jack from the existing jack in the master bedroom down the hall, running the phone wire/ cord along the hallway beneath the carpet edge, tucked under the baseboard.
In a few days, I’m having new carpet installed, so now I’m tearing out the old carpet and underpad.
During this process, I’m suddenly seeing the phone cord/wire running down the hall, just laying loosely alongside the tack strip. I’m wondering if I should do something with this cord — should I carefully staple or tape it to the sub-floor? If so, should the cord run right next to the tack strip, or under the baseboard (away from the tack strip)? I want to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the carpet installation.
There’s also a doorway off the hallway, where a marble floor threshold leads into a bathroom. I can’t tuck the cord under a baseboard there — what should I do with it?
I’d really appreciate any advice from those who might have experience with this sort of thing.
Honestly, you could probably just make the carpet installers aware of it and I’m sure they can deal with it. I’m sure they deal with coax/speaker wire/phone wire/network cable all the time.
I would tuck it under the baseboard as far as I could and as for the doorway, I would run it though the nails of the tack strip and along the inner side of said tack strip and then back though the nails on the other side of the door and continue the rest of the way under the baseboard.
Leave it be. The carpet installers know what to do with it. Any fiddling you do is just asking to damage it. Meanwhile, don’t step on it or trip over it.
If the cable is running along the “inside” of the tack strip, that’s a good place for it as the carpet installer’s tools won’t be getting too close to it.
Cables that are between the strip and the base molding are more at risk from being cut or crushed.
Either way, leave it alone. As LSLGuy said, unless this is their first job, they’ll know how to deal with the wire.
I would call the installation manager and ask him. His answer will probably be “the installers know how to handle it,” but it would be best to let him know.
(I used to work in flooring sales. It’s always best to mention anything you think may be an anomaly.)