First-time house renovation

jimbugalee

Is stairs carpet expensive? (in comparison to rooms). Actually your stairs are straight ... ours have a bend in them. Someone said it's lots as each one is an individual peice of carpet.

Ours is green with orange specs in atm ... YUCK! I'd quite like them like yours tho Susie ... wonder if that's possible. hmmmm

TomsMom

jimbugalee wrote: »

Is stairs carpet expensive? (in comparison to rooms). Actually your stairs are straight ... ours have a bend in them. Someone said it's lots as each one is an individual peice of carpet.

Ours is green with orange specs in atm ... YUCK! I'd quite like them like yours tho Susie ... wonder if that's possible. hmmmm

They would come and measure your hall, stairs, landing (whatever you want carpetted) and work out a cutting plan as to how to achieve the least wastage by cutting the individual stair/landing pieces from the smallest piece of carpet possible. It would come from a normal 3m width/4m width carpet. It's the total amount not the fact that it's individual pieces of carpet. It's something you probably can't work out for yourself as you could for a normal room.

When we ordered ours, the chap from the shop came and measured and because we weren't using their fitter he gave us the cutting plan. The carpet was delivered to the shop and our fitter went up with the plan and cut the pieces out there as there wasn't enough room for him to do it in the house.

If you want carpet down the middle of the stairs with the wood showing each side as Suiside's is, then you may be able to buy stair runner carpet (Suiside will know).

A lot of places charge extra on the fitting price for stairs because it's not as straightforward as a room. Also there is a lot of gripper as each step will require a length.

jimbugalee

Thanks TM. Gives me a better idea of what is involved. We will def need to stairs/landing/hallway carpet at some stage but I wouldn't want to waste ppl's time coming out to measure if we couldn't afford it yet. My mum has kindly said she will paid to have our room carpeted - I'm looking forward to it YEY. Then that'll almost be all of upstairs done once we've given the stairs a spruce up (obviously not including the looooooooong bathroom ZZzzzz).

I think for now I'll pay someone to come out and clean outs when we've stopped working on upstairs. Def a shoes off policy for us also!! Atm I hate having to wear shoes all over the house because of the wooden floors.

suisidevw

No, stairs carpet isn't expensive, so don't let that put you off.

When I went to the carpet shop I gave my own measurements but they came out and measured the rooms upstairs just to be sure. The fitters came and fitted the 3 upstairs rooms and the landing and took measurements of the stairs and how much of a runner we wanted. We then stripped and painted the sides while the fitter took the carpet off to be 'whipped' to make both sides 'good' and bound. They came back a few days later and laid it in 2 parts. gripper is used in 2 places on each step and the top step is folded and glued under the part of the landing that goes over the step. Grippers are extremely reasonable so don't worry about that.

My parents have a big old stairscase with a couple of bends in and there are no probs there so you'll be fine.

jimbugalee

oh excellent Susie. I'm going to have a look at those pics of your stairs again and that's def an option because I really like that Thanks for your help!

latecomer

andrew-b wrote: »

Latecomer was googling and came across this leaflet:
http://www.waterwatchscotland.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/keep-your-water-flowing.pdf
Not sure if it helps as you seem adamant there isn't a grant available but it seems that you would need to contact your local council to see if you can get a grant rather than the water company.

Andy

Thanks Andy, I came across that when I was researching getting lead pipes replaced. Edinburgh council website says that they no longer provide a grant for replacing lead pipes unless its in a tenement. Either way I'm not too concerned as long as it gets done quickly so it doesn't interfere with the rest of the work.

suisidevw

No probs JimBug, GL!

suisidevw

Just been to a shop in Cardiff at lunch and picked up 2 Crucial Trading rugs, one Sisal with red border and one blue and wool. Got both for £100, RRP was over £350! YES!

jimbugalee

Hi all,
Good weekend? We carried on tiling (see blog http://seatonroad.blogspot.com/) and almost finished the bathroom floor. Wow only 4 walls to go ...

I took up some of my marigolds and bought some daf bulbs for under the tree at the end of the garden. On that line we really need to get a tree surgeon out to look at our silver birch which is pretty near the back of the house. I think it's lovely but it might be dangerous.

Tomatoes and chillies still growing strong. Had to throw the courgettes out though. Loads of half price garden stuff in Wilko. Going to buy a strawberry pot thing for £4 Couldn't carry it back from town yesterday though!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend? Lovely weather!!

TomsMom

Floors looking really good Jimbugalee, your tiles are really nice too.

Well, we had the bedroom furniture delivered on Friday as arranged and I'm really pleased with it :j . We were given a delivery slot of 7.30am - 9.30am. We put the alarm clock on for 6.45 but at 6.30 the door bell rang :eek: . The delivery guys had been on the road since 3am (they came from West Midlands although the shop is in Cheshire) and they'd already done one drop before us! But we're not complaining, we've got it and are glad they were able to slot us back in after we had to cancel the delivery two weeks ago.

There is a slight problem with the front edge of the side panel of the wardrobe which has a "run" of the finishing wax/lacquer which shows up as a white streak about 5" long and 1/2" wide. If it had been on a back edge it wouldn't have mattered but this is quite obvious. The shop is sending out a new panel, special delivery, today so we should get it tomorrow. OH is in hospital for a few days this week (stem cell harvest) so the shop said not to worry, just give them a call when we've swapped the sides over and they'll arrange pick up.

Apart from the hiccup with the original delivery, and it was our fault we had to cancel it, we have been very happy with the customer service from this shop and we got it at a fantastic price compared to the local shop and other online stores.

We've spent some time in the garden, I've cleared another couple of patches in the borders, some shrubs that were in pots now have permanent homes. One of the primroses that I relocated to underneath the camelia last week has come into flower! Seems like this beautiful weather has fooled a lot of plants into flowering for a second time, the fushcias, campanulas and even one of the geraniums are still producing new flowers and the primrose must think it is spring! The late sowing of runner beans (July) are doing really well and full of flowers, the first of the beans is ready to pick but not enough yet for a meal.

I haven't been able to get out of town to do any shopping, and the local shop which sells bulbs (The Factory Shop) has none left so I ordered some hyacinths and miniature daffodils (I needed some more) from Wilkinsonplus along with a couple of shelving units for the loft cupboards. These are due to be delivered tomorrow so that will keep me busy whilst OH is away.

I'll try and get some photos of the furniture and put them on my blog later.

What has everyone else been doing? Anything to share?