kai807•4d ago

Hot take: power stretchers are overrated and I'll die on this hill

Everyone in this trade acts like you're a hack if you don't run a power stretcher on every single job, but I had a week back in March that made me rethink the whole thing. I was doing 3 bedrooms and a hallway in a rental over in Rockford, about 140 yards total, and my power stretcher died on me the first morning. Instead of driving 45 minutes to rent one, I just used my knee kicker and a good old-fashioned stretcher bar on the whole job. You know what happened? The carpet laid flat as glass, no ripples, no buckles, and I knocked it out in a day and a half. The landlord called me a week later saying it was the tightest install he'd seen in his 20 rentals. I'm not saying power stretchers are junk, they save your knees and back for sure, but guys act like you can't get a tight stretch by hand and that's just not true. If you know your kick, know your technique, and take your time at the seams, you can get just as good of a result. Anybody else here still stretch by hand on smaller jobs or am I really the only one left doing it this way?