Floors - How to save money?

rlfan82

We are looking to save money on flooring if possible, we have to floor the whole house. Just wondered if people have found any useful ways of doing this in the past. Here are my idea's so far:

• Kitchen Diner is around 50 m2 (est) - use cheaper laminate instead of TileLoc?
• 2 x Bathrooms around 10 m2 each - TileLoc
• Lounge - Half decent carpet, around £10/m2, 20 m2
• H/S/L - Cheap carpet
• 4 x Bedrooms - Between 10 and 18 m2 each - Cheap Carpet, One with laminate.
• Buy gripper rods from ebay in bulk
• Buy Underlay from ebay in bulk
• Buy 2nd hand/unused laminate for one bedroom.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

lily_the_pink

Don't use cheap laminate in the kitchen - it really is not suitable for a surface where there can be spills (or washing machine leaks - it will warp).

Also, it marks easily so if you actually use the kitchen to cook it will deteriorate over time.

A modern vinyl covering would be more suitable (and off cuts are fairly cheap and poss cheaper than laminate plus easy to fit)

lilac_lady

Avoid laminate in bedrooms. It's not comfortable (I still remember lino) and will be noisier than a cheap carpet. A carpet will be warmer and look better too IMO.

rlfan82

Forgot to mention, we also have dogs so expensive things dont last long.

Laminate was just going to be used in the downstairs spare bedroom/music room, suppose it depends if I can get and offcut of carpet.

How does this modern vinyl work? I just remember the 80's kitchen lino

ormus

buy a smaller house?
a 50 sq m kitchen is one hellava size kitchen.

ps,
dont use laminate in a kitchen.

andrew-b

Buy cheap, buy twice.
No to laminate in kitchen or bathroom. Only "laminate" that i've come across suitable for either of these situations is Aquastep which is entirely plastic (Actually looks quite good from the samples i've got) - most of the laminates claiming to be suitable for kitchen/bathroom you have to wipe up spills/splashes straight away as they aren't really waterproof.

Wasn't sure what TileLoc was so googled but it appears to be a laminate and about the 2nd google result down was a bad review for it. I didn't look hard for that bad review so i'd guess you'll find many other bad review for it.

2nd hand laminate..wouldn't touch as the tongue/grooving might be damaged if not carefully removed.
If you can't afford the lot at once then "divide and conquer" and do it in stages as you can afford. We're living with same carpets as we moved in with 4 years back.

Another idea for you to consider is carpet tiles ..easy diyed so minimal fitting cost and you can pick up 2nd hand one's quite cheapily. Doesn't have to look like a checkboard either you can get carpet tiles with a pile to them now.

ormus

you can get industrial quality carpet tiles from any office that is being refurbished. free or very cheap.
they normally throw them into the skip.