Is this normal for carpet fitters?

jojo23

Hi

I've never had a carpet fitted before so i'm a bit naive as to their normal job description.

They took the living room door off in order to put the grippers down.

When they left the one in charge told me i needed to take three eighths off, to fit the door back properly.

They also dumped all the underlay wrapping and carpet packaging at the side of the house.

Shouldn't they have put the door back themselves and taken the rubbish with them? Its what i assumed. Am i wrong?

On the other hand, they do seem to have done a good job laying the carpet.

computerwoman

quite normal to take the door off...I would invest in an electric planer £18 at toolstation.com works great but as for the left overs they should have taken them...I'd ring them up and ask what they are playing at they wont want bad publicity but then again was it a reputable firm...:D

HugoSP

As a small builder I sometimes agree with the client that he will dispose of the rubbish before the job even starts if he wants to keep the cost down. Removal can add up to £100 on a job that costs say £1300.

The chances are that they are working to a tight margin to remain competitive. Householders can dispose of the carpets FOC whereas the fitters would have to pay to dump it as it would be classed as trade waste.

This practise is getting more common in the home improvement business. We had our boiler replaced under the warmfront scheme a few years ago and the plumbing firm left the old boiler in our garden. As I was getting rid of a load of scrap anyway I just stripped the old boiler down, sorted the metals out and weighed them in with everything else I had at the time at the scrap merchants.

Again, as their margins are tight they stopped paying someone to go around after them to collect the old boilers. Personally I was surprised that the fitters didn't take them themselves to add to their Christmas fund.

If you do invest in an electric planer, make sure you mark the desired depth you want to plane to on both sides of the door and you don't plane off an edge, otherwise you will split the corner of the door. Plane onto the door from both edges.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

oh, and just make sure you take it off the bottom of the door, you don't want to replace the door and then say oops :eek:.

Avoriaz

jojo23 wrote: »

..When they left the one in charge told me i needed to take three eighths off, to fit the door back properly…..

Check the door carefully to ensure that there is sufficient wood to allow 3/8 inch to be removed without weakening the door too much.

You will be ok if the door is solid or has a thick wooden frame but some modern doors are made with quite narrow frames and some of this may have already been removed when the door was first fitted.

If it started with 1 inch, and the original fitter removed 1/4 inch and you now remove another 3/8 inch, that only leaves 3/8 inch left.

Phirefly

Our carpet fitter recommended we plane the door, but we just never got round to it. After a week or two, the carpet had settled and now we've no need to.

ukjoel

When we had our carpet fitted we had it done in stages one room at a time as it was all we could afford.

What annoyed me was that when i ordered the carpet and underlay you are advised to order 10% over what you need.

I did this but when the job was finished I noticed they were quite happy putting the underlay in the back of the van as they could use this for the next job but the carpet was left for us to dispose of.

I told them to take the carpet away and when they said no I said I wanted the underlay back then and they said no to that.

I called the carpet shop who said it was a matter between me and the fitters so I called the police. The minute I started calling them they brought back my underlay.

Might call me tight but the 10% we saved in 3 rooms meant the fourth needed no underlay and saved us £150.

Carpets are one of those items people dont buy very often and are quite expensive so have the potential to really have you over.

[Deleted User]

Hi,

good point re the underlay, those boys knew what they were doing ok, a wee bit here and there gives them enough for a weekend job, and who sees the underlay, whether it's straight or patched?

broonbear

as a carpetfitter i'll give you my take on this, first if the door is going to be to tight i'll take it off for the customer but theres no point putting it back on cause it won't fit, second the scraps of carpet belong to the customer not the fitter and the council run disposal yards charge me £45 for one single trip to their yard which the customer won't pay. and third i charge the customer for the amount of underlay i put on their floor if it takes just under two bags whats left is mine not the customers. but a do carry bin bags with me and bag up all the scraps so its easier for the customer to take them free of charge to the disposal yard

Trimmer_2

It depends on what has been included in your quote as to what you'll get done. Some companies will do everything including moving furniture out and replacing once job complete, hoovering, cutting doors and removing all rubbish. You find that this service costs more tho because it takes longer to do. Carpet right fitters generally don't take anything away in the way of rubbish and will charge you extra if you haven't emptied the areas and removed the old carpets before they arrive.
With regards to the underlay - if the quote has stated x sq.mtrs then its quite easy to see if they are taking the mick by measuring the areas yourself and working out how much you need but some quotes will just say "to supply and install blah blah carpet with new underlay and gripper".
Don't forget that different types of underlay have different quantities per roll tho most are 15 sq.mtrs / 18 sq.yds.

jojo23

Thanks for the response and for the planing advice.