Looking to put down a budget carpet for the kids playroom. How easy is it to lay a carpet? What tools do i need?
Any other suggestions for value flooring? Just needs to be clean and durable…they’ll wreck it anyway!

Cheers

Chris

Carpet fitting is one of those things that looks much easier than it actually is.

It only takes one cut to ruin a carpet. Pay a  man to do it.

If you insist in doing it yourself use carpet tiles. If you bollocks up a cut then it’s only one tile.

if the kids spill something you can replace single tiles,

Beaten to it but a carpet fitter, for the sake of thirty quid or so it’s not worth it.

I would tend to agree with PP

I have fitted a couple of carpets many years ago. took me ages and not as good as a pro job. Pro fitters make it look so easy but its not

I agree. I have laid numerous wood and laminate floors but for the small cost of fitting a carpet, get a pro. I tried and ruined one a couple years back. Never to be repeated.

You may struggle to find a fitter to lay a carpet if you don’t buy from them.

But if you can, go for it,it’s a ball-ache of a job.

If you have to do it yourself, you’ll need gripper for the edges and a kicker tool to stretch the carpet into place. And lots and lots of Stanley blades,use a new blade for EACH cut. Plenty of how-to online.

Alex

You may struggle to find a fitter to lay a carpet if you don’t buy from them.

In 20 odd years of home ownership, I’ve never found this, but your username suggests you live in that london, so not in the real world. 🙂

Yep it typically costs very little to have a local company do it and they remove the old carpet saving and akward trip to the dump as well. £30 well spent.

The only thing I always do myself if lift the old floor a few days before they come, it gives a chance to fix any dodgy boards or find any nasty surprises. One room we were going from carpet to lino. The carpet and underlay was hiding a totally mangled up cork floor that had been glued directly to boards with a gallons of contact adhesive!

You may struggle to find a fitter to lay a carpet if you don’t buy from them.

Many carpet fitters are screwed by the likes of CarpetRight and seem to jump at the chance of independent work in my experience.

Thanks all…

Country dweller here….couldn’t think of anything worse than living in London!

I’ll find a local fitter and save the hassle. Job jobbed!

How old are the kids? If young then consider these foam mats:

I laid these in our nursery and they survived two children nicely. Comfortable to play on, easy to cut with a stanley knife, easy to fit around everything, and I just used double-sided carpet tape to secure them. Keep a few spare and if one gets trashed or “soiled” then you can easily replace it without ripping everything else up.

Thanks Graham. Did you fit them directly to floorboards or concrete floor?

There were already (fairly shonky) varnished wood floorboards in there so we just laid directly on top of that. I guess you could put down a sheet of underlay or something first if laying on top of concrete.

Oh and top tip – if you go with those then lay them in a random pattern so you can replace any one of them with a random tile without it looking weird.

I fitted a cheap carpet in a small square bedroom of my old flat. Bought a carpet stretching/kicker thing after looking at guides online.

Didn’t use any underlay and used carpet spray adhesive to stick it down. Lasted fine a few years until I moved. Without underlay I guess it wouldn’t be very soft for kids playing on and not sure how durable it would be

The mats as per above would be good.