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Looks like the carpet shops like to charge lots for underlay and grippers which are available for MUCH less on t'internet. Does anyone know if independent fitters exist if I supplied the other bits n bobs myself?
The local shop didn't particularly like the idea of me supplying those items - I guess that's where they make their profit rather than the headline figure on the actual carpet. But they will store the carpet we'll need for the extra bedroom (not yet built) for free.
The likes of carpet right etc seemed like an ok deal once you ignore the 50% off the sticker. I'm sure it never was that price anyway! But it did seem a bit impersonal. or course, I'm not sure I can tell 1 carpet quality from another once you've picked roughly the type you want.
help and advice much appreciated.
shakes head in shame...... has my life really come round to talking about carpet?
whoops wrong forum. Can anyone move it please?
Same info for me too please - its a bluddy mine field!
They have to make the money for the free fitting some where I am a fitter and dont work for free .
for fitting a normal room I charge £2.85 a square metre and that includes any grippers .
Most fitters are independent so you should not have any problems getting one but unless you know the fitter then you dont know what you are getting untill after the fitting.
Where in the world are you if in the skipton area then I could help out.
buy carpet
buy underlay
buy gripper rods
add a hammer/bloster/stanley knife
cross fingers .......... job done 8)
obviously you don't know the fitter if you just get a shop to organise either so I guess.
£3 per m looks about the going rate from the shops for fitting round here (guildford). + £35ish extra for stairs. But carpet right wanted 131 for 60m of gripper rods and the local place want 100! they are freely availably for about £20 - £30 seems like robbery to me!
trout - re:underlay, the local shop sell Hypertread (9mm super High density) but there are plenty of other similar-ish ones about any recommendation?
I will never buy from Carpet Right again. Every muppet I dealt with from beginning to end was useless and the end results was, at best, average.
HTH 🙂
O/T Trout good to see another forum user in the Skipton area. Give us a shout if you fancy a run out at some point. Would be good to get a few locals together.
I've just gone through the same pain at carpetrite. They wanted to charge for everything and it ended up costing sill money. In the end I got two mobile independants from the Yellow Pages to come and price up and they too were about the same price. Their only bonus was that I would be getting MUCH better underlay from them which improves the wear and feel of the carpet.
So, I bought the carpet from Carpetrite and fitting at £2.50 per sq/m. Bought some Cloud Nine underlay and gripper rods (recommeded by both independants) from Ebay at about £3 sq/m (carpetrite wanted about £8 for their basic stuff). And hey presto, fitted for not too much extra work and lots of money still in my pocket to buy bike stuff!!
Yeh got my carpets and fitter from carpetright, grippers from B&Q and underlay online. Layed hardboard over floorboards, then underlay and grippers. Carpet fitter came round and said that the fitting includes installing grippers and underlay and that I needn't have bothered.
So when I came to do the next couple of rooms, I just did the hardboard and left the grippers and underlay in the room and he did the lot. He'd even worked out how much extra carpet I needed for the stairs and said don't mention the stairs to carpetright, just bung him an extra £20 on the day 🙂 Think he might have regretted it though when he turned up late at tea time and I reminded him he had a stairs to do!
spooky - hardboard over the floorboards? is that really necessary? I've got some small undulations in old floor boards, but won't a decent underlay just iron out that sort of stuff?
Where in Surrey are you - I having a biking, carpet-fitting mate on the Hants/Surrey/Berks border.
He's done a good job on our last place and we're booking him for this one too.
I second Skyliner's thoughts. Buy some decent (Cloud 9) underlay online, then get your fitter for the rest,= Better quality but for a similar all-in price.
Jeff - I'm in Godalming - so probably not a million miles from you. My email address is in my profile if you wouldn't mind pinging me his contact details - or indeed passing mine to him.
I got underlay from a factory shop and got our carpet fitter Dave the carpet to price uyp the job. I'd not fit a carpet myself and rate carpet salesmem up there along side used car dealers estate agents. Allthough having said that I'd never fit a carpet myself.
spooky - hardboard over the floorboards?
My floorboards were a little uneven and had 5mm gaps between them all, plus my fireplaces were raised slightly so the hardboard brought the floor up to the right height.
Our old carpets had foam underlay and had disintegrated into dust, particularly where there were gaps in the boards. Felt like walking over a sheet laid on the floorboards!
Its relatively cheap to do and hopefully the carpets will last longer for it.
spooky, what sort of thickness board did you put down out of interest?
I've only got 1-3 mm gaps at worst , I can probably fill any larger bits that have split off with some cork packing - there aren't many.
Jeff - thanks for passing on my details to your mate. He emailed me his details earlier.
Just basic 3mm hardboard I think, the stuff thats shiny one side and rough the other. Very quick and easy...bag of tacks, a hammer and a sharp stanley knife to score it then fold to break to fit round the edges of the room.