sofa and carpet advice

wannabe

oops i posted this under the wrong heading.
can anyone help me please.
we are about to do up our first house.
We have an open plan entrance, lounge, stairs and landing and need to carpet the whole lot and have it fitted.
We have had a quote from carpet right for 1000 is that about right?
Is there a way to carpet cheaper?
Could you also advise on good carpet it needs to be fairly good quality as it gets lots of wear.
Also we want a new sofa are there any websites for e.g end of line stores such as m and s? also is it cheaper to buy off internet or go to a shop?
Help we are too new to this and afraid of making expensive boobies!!!!!
thanks

Lemoncurd

We just had new carpet fitted throughout upstairs (4 beds + landing) and on the stairs. Went to few carpet places (Allied Carpets being a big chain) and got quotes for 80/20 wool mixes with a weight of 60g/sq m which are supposed to be good and hard wearing (we were advised to get at least 50g sq m) with superior quality underlay as many people advised that a good quality underlay makes a big difference to the life of the carpet.
We then played them off against each other, I think we got the biggest discount from Allied who dropped from about £2400 to £1800, they kept phoning up and the more I ummed and ahhed the more money they dropped off.