Fixing carpet imperfections

I lie awake at night and think about why the world is the way it is. Last night, I realized that big tobacco companies were probably in bed with the broadloom industry back in the Fifties. How do I know this? Pure logic.

Broadloom was the trendy new status symbol in the Fifties. Households were scrambling to get wall-to-wall installations of the new 12-foot wide rolls, based on seductive ads like this:

To hear friends say, "Your living room is charming! You have such good taste..." is a compliment indeed. And, happily, we can all earn such praise. The practical benefits of modern broadloom are just as revolutionary as its beauty!
- Actual ad from 1959 magazine

Now, the other big trend in the Fifties was smoking. 59% of men and 31% of women smoked cigarettes*. People would congregate at each other's houses for cocktail parties and smoke and drink until the clock told them it was time to have one more for the road. Then they'd back their big Chrysler's and Chevrolet's out of the driveway and steer home on the dark streets in the outskirts of the big city.

In the morning, the groggy party host would wake up, empty the overflowing ashtrays, and sweep up the stray butts that had fallen from the fingers of animated conversationalists. And, oh, the dismay at the number of blackened burn marks now branded into the new broadloom.

Now, tobacco tycoons, who also went to cocktail parties, saw their chance. Why not invest in broadloom and make some extra cash off those fallen butts? Sure, they reasoned, people could move furniture to cover the little melted pools of nylon tufting. But eventually, when the furniture configuration became too wacky to move safely through the room, especially if you were tipsy and smoking, the broadloom would have to be replaced.

"Cha-ching", thought the tobacco moguls.

Wide World of Spots

Nowadays, residential broadloom has fallen a notch or two in popularity, but if you still have some, I'm guessing it's carrying a few spots where pets have made their own op art, fireplaces have spat cinders, smokers have dropped stray ash, or your cheese fondue handle broke as you were carrying the melted gruyere and emmenthal cheeses to your expectant guests, and since that night the carpet has always smelled briskly cheesy.

As it happens, our fireplace recently lobbed an ember onto the beige carpet, leaving a sour little black hole. I talked to Alex Black at Celtic Carpets in Orangeville, Ontario, and got a step-by-step professional approach to fixing it, which I then attempted with surprising success.

Seven Steps to Rug Relief

1. At the edge of the carpet closest to the spot, use a pair of pliers to grab some tufts and pull the carpet off the tack strips underneath.
2. Peel the carpet back until you've reached the area where the spot is.
3. Use a permanent marker to draw around the edge of the patch, using the grid of the carpet to guide your pen (so the piece will be square to the grain of the carpet).
4. Cut the spot out with a utility blade. Safety tip: Wear safety glasses in case the blade fractures and sends a shard your way.
5. Trace the severed patch onto a piece of scrap carpet, being careful again to match the grain lines of the carpet backing. TIP: If you don't have any leftover spare carpet, try excising a piece from the back corner of a closet, or from a spot that is covered by furniture you never intend to move, like the piano, although you'll have to move it first to get at the carpet under it, but why should any repair be senselessly easy?
6. Put the patch in place and seal seams with duct tape (clear or classic).
7. Roll carpet flat and push down on the edges to re-affix it to the tack strips.

A note to the creative avoider: If your spot is smack dab bang in the middle of the room, don't be tempted to cut from the top to remove the spot. You'll hack away too many tufts and the repaired patch will always be obvious because it'll be bald around the edges. Move furniture and roll the whole carpet back. I mean it.

• Source: The First Measured Century: An Illustrated Guide to Trends in America, 1900-2000 by Theodore Caplow, Louis Hicks, and Ben J. Wattenberg