Carpet

vix_90

Hi, I have just bought my first house and am after some advise from all you thrifty people at this rather expensive time.

I have purchased new build property so everything will be lovely and new, however you cant paint / wallpaper for about a year, so everything will initially be white! I decided not to get carpets offered from the builder, as I felt that I could probably get a better carpet for less money if I sourced it myself.

The property has 4 bedrooms. At present it is just me and my boyfriend going to be living in it. So we could get away with just carpeting our master bedroom and the smallest bedroom for his office as he works from home, but will obviously need lounge, stairs and landings all carpeted. Dilemma:

Do I: Get the whole house carpeted (inc all 4 bedrooms) in the same cheap ish carpet so they can use the off cuts for the stairs.

OR
Get a good quality carpet for the stairs and landings that will last, and a cheap carpet for the other rooms as I may want to change them when it comes to decorating in a year or so's time.

BJV

I would not get either. Go for wood or laminate. Just as warm, easier to clean and much more hygienic. You can also do it yourself.


The only place we have carpeted in our house are the stairs. Rather than buy mega expensive and expect it too last for years( they never do ) we buy mid range and change every couple of years so it always looks fresh.


p.s good luck in your new home.

Vampgirl

Your situation sounds similar to ours - we are (hopefully!) just about to complete on a new build and are in the process of sorting the carpets coz we also decided not to go with the developer's (overpriced and boring) range of carpets.

We've decided to get the whole house carpeted between completion and moving in. For two reasons: firstly, because its less hassle to carpet the house whilst there is no furniture in there. Secondly, there's more chance to get a better deal on a "whole house" job.

In terms of what carpet to go for....it really depends on how much you've budgeted. We're spending £2k and have decided to get good quality carpets for lounge and stairs/landing which should last for years, but for the 4 bedrooms we're just going for something fairly cheap. We're having a good quality underlay everywhere though.

Also just want to ask....I knew about not wallpapering for a while, but why not painting? The builders themselves will paint it white, so what's the problem with another colour? Or is it just that leaving it white is easier to touch up any cracks later?

vix_90

Thank you for your responses, gives me something to think about!

I think i would rather have carpet as we are getting ceramic tiles for the hallway, kitchen and bathrooms. So i think maybe laminate everywhere else might feel a bit too cold.

Vamp girl we are looking at doing the same, getting it fitted before we move in (with a completion date of 18th dec, that should be fun!!). We have budgeted about the same. It' just so tricky to know where to 'scrimp' on.

what would you say average price is per square meter? There is such a wide range of prices out there.

As for painting, I thought they didn't like you to paint to give the plaster board time to dry out ie: if you paint in a different colour after they've painted it white, when things are still 'drying out' it will take longer to dry?? I don't know really.

Vampgirl

You're right, there are sooooo many carpets out there - it took us far longer to decide on the carpets than it did the house! Its been a lot of hard work, and trying to tie in the carpet fitting with completion and removals is proving slightly tricky. But I'm sure we're making the right decision: the carpets Taylor Wimpey offered us retail at less than £10 per sqm and they wanted £2k. For around the same price we are getting much nicer carpets which are more to our taste (in terms of colour and style).

In the end we decided on a polyprop saxony for the lounge (about £20 per sqm) - we're also having a tiled hallway and kitchen/diner so we wanted something soft and luxurious in the lounge. For the stairs and landing we've gone for a 45oz 80/20 wool twist (also around £20 per sqm) which should be hard wearing. For the bedrooms we're having a cheap but decent polyprop which is costing around £10 per sqm.

We decided to save on the bedroom carpets because you don't spend that much time in there (with your eyes open at least *lol*) and besides, a lot of the carpet is covered by furniture anyway.

ben_m_g

We went with cheap carpet without underlay, did the whole house in one go.

Putting expensive flooring or hard flooring in straight away would concern me, we have moved furniture around several times and changed the colour scheme of most of the rooms.

Now that we have the layout and d!cor of the room, we are looking into more durable flooring

daveyjp

If bedrooms are narrower than 4m, 5m in some cases, look for remnants and roll ends. You don't get decent carpet for much less than £20 sq m, but roll ends could be half this.

Vampgirl

ben_m_g wrote: »

We went with cheap carpet without underlay, did the whole house in one go.

Putting expensive flooring or hard flooring in straight away would concern me, we have moved furniture around several times and changed the colour scheme of most of the rooms.

Now that we have the layout and d!cor of the room, we are looking into more durable flooring

I disagree with this - I think its a false economy. Even with dead cheap carpet (@ £3.50 per sqm) and no underlay we'd still be looking at around £700 for our house. I'd much rather think things through beforehand and put that £700 towards our final choice. At least when buying a new build you've got plenty of time to plan in advance ;-)


From what I've learned over the past few months, if you want to cut costs you can make a cheaper carpet look/feel better if you fit a good quality underlay - decent underlay makes a huge difference and can be had for less than £5 per sqm (ignore the prices in places like SCS and Carpetright).

We've also found that local independent carpet fitters are cheaper than the local carpet shops, and significantly cheaper than the likes of SCS and Carpetright.

ben_m_g

Vampgirl wrote: »

I disagree with this - I think its a false economy. Even with dead cheap carpet (@ £3.50 per sqm) and no underlay we'd still be looking at around £700 for our house. I'd much rather think things through beforehand and put that £700 towards our final choice. At least when buying a new build you've got plenty of time to plan in advance ;-)


From what I've learned over the past few months, if you want to cut costs you can make a cheaper carpet look/feel better if you fit a good quality underlay - decent underlay makes a huge difference and can be had for less than £5 per sqm (ignore the prices in places like SCS and Carpetright).

We've also found that local independent carpet fitters are cheaper than the local carpet shops, and significantly cheaper than the likes of SCS and Carpetright.

Yes false economy for you perhaps, but not for everyone all the time.

In our case even if we had put good underlay down the carpet would still have had to be replaced.
And at the time we could not afford the flooring we are looking at now.

So had we opted for wood or tile when we brought the place it would have been inferior quality and ultimately regretted it.
With carpet we saved up and decided what we really wanted.

MoneyMate

Would not recommend Carpet in Bathrooms or Toilets, very difficult to keep smell free.