Hip to Be SQUARE ; Carpet Tiles Give You Colorful Options and Can Be Easily Replaced If Messes Happen

Carpet, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. There's the stubborn cabernet spill next to the coffee table; the shoe spots at the foot of the recliner and sofa. Then there's the nail polish stain, the unraveling threads, the cigarette burn, that place where the cat ... well, you get the picture.

Maintaining a clean and presentable carpet can feel like a task of Sisyphean proportions. But if the claims of InterfaceFLOR, a carpet maker in Elmhurst, Ill., are true, the days of spot cleaning, spraying, dabbing and fussing could come to an end.

Say hello to the modular carpet tile. Replaceable, interchangeable and available in an array of colors, textures and patterns, modular carpet tiles by InterfaceFLOR are here.

"They're still catching on here in New Mexico," says Lette Birn, the owner of Form + Function in Santa Fe. "But the people who have discovered them pretty much go crazy for their charm."

Priced around about $3 to $10 per square foot, modular carpet tiles can be found at several interior design retailers in Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Carpet tiles also are sold at Santa Fe's Victoria Price Contemporary Home and in Albuquerque at Hey Jhonny at 3418-B Central SE. "People really fall for these modular pieces," says Hey Jhonny sales associate Andres Garcia. "You can mix and match, and they're made out of recycled materials. There's so much you can do with them."

The carpet tiles, which are uniform pieces that fit together, are attached with one-sided adhesives to the neighboring tiles, but not to the floor. That means no glue or nails, no gigantic rolls of carpet and no costly labor.

"Modular carpet squares are two kinds of DIY," says Chip DeGrace, vice president of product development at FLOR, "do-it-yourself and design-ityourself."

The tiles can be applied to just about any smooth flooring, including hardwoods, vinyl tile, laminates, sealed concrete and plywood, and require no special tools, DeGrace says. The only surfaces that won't work are unsealed concrete floors, unfinished waxed floors and already carpeted floors.

"There are advanced properties in our tiles that keep it from slipping and buckling," DeGrace says. The tiles also stay intact under foot and vacuuming, DeGrace says.

The user-friendly tiles enable homeowners to mix and match for a range of designs and functions. For example, the tiles can be cut and tailored to create wall-to-wall carpeting. They can be used in smaller capacity as an area rug or shaped into a hallway runner or outdoor patio flooring. "Our tiles are designed so that they can fit with one another within a color system, allowing people to not only design it themselves, but design it confidently," says DeGrace.

No tile is permanent, so a nasty stain or burn can be replaced simply by extracting a tile or two.

"Nobody has problems with them unsticking," Birn says. "If you have dogs or kids that make stains, you can take one tile up and wash it or rotate it around. You can also get new tiles and replace the whole thing, that's the main charm with the whole system."

Most of FLOR's tiles are made of nylon, but they also are available in hemp, wool and other materials. The tiles also come in different thicknesses -- extra plush for bedrooms, heathered to mask dirt in high traffic areas or treaded for utility rooms.

A comprehensive gallery, tile calculator and installation information are available at www.flor.com.

(c) 2007 Albuquerque Journal. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.