Home Studio - Turning Carpet into Hard Floors

claydough

I have a nice space in my basement I am using for studio space. The problem is, the room is primarily a TV/entertainment room and has rather high pile carpet. This isn't a huge issue for 3/4 shots and smaller, but I want to do full body shots with seamless paper.


My question is...has anyone rigged up a clever way of putting a hard floor over their carpet for such a purpose? If so, how did you do it and what did you use?
Thanks!

--Clay

Pixoul

claydough wrote:

My question is...has anyone rigged up a clever way of putting a hard floor over their carpet for such a purpose? If so, how did you do it and what did you use?

Just pick up one or two 4' x 8' sheets of plywood depending on how much square footage you need. If that looks too ghetto for your tastes then also pick up Traffic Master or Pergo composite flooring to lay down over that.

The most inexpensive composite flooring should be around $1.25 to $2.00 per square foot and is a floating floor; it snaps together, looks like hardwood, and doesn't need to be anchored to anything.

Don't lay the composite flooring directly on carpet because it will fall apart from flexing. It definitely needs the plywood underneath to act as a solid base.

claydough

Thanks! Is this something you have tried?

I also heard of a good idea on another forum. One gentleman used 1/4" plexiglas. If he wanted a reflective surface he would lay the seamless on the carpet and put the plexi over that...if he didn't want a reflective surface, he would put the plexiglas down first and put the seamless over it.

I measured the pile on my carpet and it is 5/8" thick...his was 1/2" thick. It just seems to me that 1/4" plexiglas would give too much on carpet. Also, don't you think if you put plexiglas on top of seamless paper that was just on the carpet that you would get a rip or crease in the paper? He claims he gets neither. Hmmm...

--Clay

jungle jim

thats what we did.
A few boxes of the pergo stuff (or whatever was on sale and looked good)
We just snapped it togeather and viola
We leave it down all the time, when needed we'll just pull the muslin over it

Pixoul

claydough wrote:

Thanks! Is this something you have tried?

I haven't tried Traffic Master over carpet but I have Traffic Master both in our downstairs living room in the house and my 600 square foot office/studio above my garage.