Buying carpet - advice please?

JustAnotherSaver

Don't worry, i don't want to know something like how to buy a carpet :rotfl::rotfl::T

What i'm looking for is just little tips, bits of advice, pointers on things that if you don't know what to look for you'll overlook & then at a later date think - oh i wish i'd done this differently, or that didn't quite work as i wanted, wasn't the result i expected etc.

We will be looking to carpet:

* Living room
* Hall
* Stairs
* Landing

The hall, stairs & landing will be one type of carpet with the living room being another.

There's only 2 carpet places in this area. A small warehouse & a carpetright. I know big names often get panned but the small warehouse didn't really float our boat & we dealt with carpetright before & was happy enough.

We're booked in for a measure taking tomorrow. We've been priced for some underlay which we looked at & was the £9.99 rubber stuff they have.

Looking at the advised underlay for living rooms they have some £8.99 foam like stuff & then a couple of £12.99 rubber like stuff. One of them feels super cushioned. Very nice. I like the feel of it a lot.

The carpets we're looking at are both short pile. We were looking at some at £9.99 (2 different types at that price) & another type at £12.99, but leaning more towards one of those at the £9.99.

Thing is, there felt a bit of a difference in thickness of the carpet alone on both the £9.99 types. What would be more important? Thicker carpet or thicker underlay? I know that question is likely going to be much of a muchness but i don't know the correct question to be asking really & hopefully someone will be able to flip it & we'll be able to find out what it is we're actually looking for.


When we had the bedroom carpet fitted we made the mistake of having the doors off, so when i fitted them back, one bedroom was perfectly fine but i needed to plane a fair amount off the bottom of the other door.




Note: I understand that we will probably be able to drop the price if we source underlay from here, grippers from there, this from that place, that from the other place but to be honest i just prefer to get from the one place & after discussing a price if i accept it then i'll get it, if not then i'll have to just go elsewhere. I don't really want to start picking bits from here there & everywhere (just in case this thread went down that angle).


Thanks.

JustAnotherSaver

Although having said that, i have just found the exact same £12.99 underlay which for the living room alone when you're done with delivery works out at just over £100 cheaper for the living room alone from underlay4u.

Wonder if they'll fit it if you provide your own :rotfl:

phil24_7

My advice would be to source ALL of your materials online then hire someone to fit them.

You will save hundreds and you will also likely end up with a far superior product and finish!

phil24_7

You can buy much better underlay than that supplied by the big stores...for far less that the tat they peddle.

Tredair/dreamwalk etc get good recommendations.

I am lucky, we have a place called Trago Mills near us that sell the carpets and all the accessories far cheaper than anywhere except online places.

Mojisola

Buy the best quality underlay you can.

JEN22

Cloud 9 underlay is the best

JustAnotherSaver

Thing is, you can buy the grippers & the underlay & all that jazz online no problem

But you really need to see the carpet in person, surely? And for that we only have 2 carpet shops here. Else it means a good drive out which i don't particularly want to have to do to be honest.



But what about the earlier question - what about the importance of a thick carpet? Does it matter if the carpet feels quite thin when you have such thick (11mm apparently) underlay?

phil24_7

I have thick underlay (tredair dreamwalk 11mm which is almost identical to cloud9 11mm) and a thick carpet in the bedrooms and it is bledy ansome!

Thin carpet will always feel thin, even if it is on a thick underlay.

Find the carpet you want locally, then buy it online. However, buying carpets is not a regular thing so it may be worth travelling to find a good selection of carpets so that you can either buy it from them, or buy the exact carpet online and get it delivered.

JustAnotherSaver

phil24_7 wrote: »

I have thick underlay (tredair dreamwalk 11mm which is almost identical to cloud9 11mm) and a thick carpet in the bedrooms and it is bledy ansome!

Thin carpet will always feel thin, even if it is on a thick underlay.

Find the carpet you want locally, then buy it online. However, buying carpets is not a regular thing so it may be worth travelling to find a good selection of carpets so that you can either buy it from them, or buy the exact carpet online and get it delivered.

Thanks.

On the topic of thin/thick carpets, i would've thought that a shorter pile would've been more suitable for somewhere like living room & stairs, especially stairs, since these will surely be getting walked over more than let's say a bedroom carpet. Buying a thicker pile would've (i thought) just flattened down after some years of walking over the same spots constantly (especially stairs).

Grenage

In my experience you need a decent upright vacuum used once a week to keep the piles looking OK. Synthetics are more forgiving, I think.

getmore4less

Kidderminster there are loads of carpet places and loads of large(room size) end of roll deals.

(probably other places with more options than where you are)

Might be worth a trip if not to far, or can make a short break in the area get to see and feel loads of different brands/styles,

£40ish seems to be the delivery cost if you don't have suitable transport.