Fix a cigarette burn in a carpet easily with some common household tools.
What You Will Need:
- Hot Melt Glue Gun
- Scissors
- Craft Knife
Firstly you will need to cut out the existing burn. Use a sharp craft knife and cut out a square a little larger than the burn mark. Try to cut through the pile and the base layer with a single cut to get a clean finish. Hacking at the pile or base layer will pull strands out and make it difficult to get a neat finish.
Now you need to cut a replacement plug. When installing carpets, you should always ask for a few of the scrap pieces to use to repair damaged areas. If you do not have any scrap pieces available then you will need to cut a corner or edge out of an inconspicuous area of you existing carpet. Cut a small square, the size of the plug you removed out from behind a couch, under a bed or in an unused corner of a room. If the hole is going to be noticeable then use the cigarette burned piece you cut out to plug the removed portion, which will make it less obvious.
Test that the plug fits snugly into the hole where you removed the cigarette burn. The base layer should not overlap anywhere or the plug will protrude from the rest of the carpet.
You will now need to glue the plug into the hole. Heat up the glue gun so that the glue is as hot as possible. Use the glue gun to put hot glue all over the layer underneath the carpet in the area of the hole, make sure to get a generous amount of glue around all four of the edges. Now press the plug into the hole. Press the plug down so that the glue hardens with the base layer at the same level as the existing carpet base layer. Put a dap of glue onto the ends of any protruding strands and push the ends back onto the base layer.
If the plug has not seated well, try ironing the area with a clothing iron on a high heat. The heat will melt the glue and allow you to manipulate the plug to get a better seating.
The plug may be noticeable for a few days or weeks (depending on the area traffic) after the repair until the piles in both the plug and the existing carpet become similar (the plug came from an unused piece of carpet and will likely be fluffier than the carpet around it). Care should be taken when sweeping or vacuuming over the plugged area as it will never be as strong as the original carpet.
