Pro tip: check the tack strip for rust before you stretch, learned this the hard way in a Mesa rental last Tuesday
I got called to redo a rental in Mesa last Tuesday because the tenant said the carpet felt loose near the hallway, and the landlord just wanted a stretch job, quick money. I walked in and it was a 12 by 14 room, maybe 8 years old, and the carpet peeled up by hand at the corner. Every tack strip along that wall had pins that snapped off when I touched them, so the stretch I was about to do would have lasted a week. I ended up pulling the whole room, replacing about 30 feet of strip, and the landlord was annoyed at the extra cost until I showed him the rusty pins in a cup. If I had just stretched it and walked, he would have called me back in a month and blamed my work. Do you guys run your hand along the strip first on every stretch job, or only when something feels off?