Carpet advice sought

Jeremy

Carpets are the one thing where you must buy quality.

I paid £40 a square metre 12 yrs ago and the thing still looks brand new and it has taken the wear of 3 sons as well as Mrs mick and myself.

Go for 80% wool and 20% nylon. If possible get hotel quality because impressions of castors etc soon bounce out. Also it is so easy to clean.

I would be inclined to go for an end of roll bargin, the all shops sell these, on a top end carpet instead of a lower grade one at normal prices.

Yes go for Duralay, it will take a pounding.

Also go for plain neutral colours, you will eventually get fed up with a patterned carpet whereas a plain one always seems to look good and makes the room look bigger. Also you cannot place an oriental rug on a patterned carpet, it just looks awful.

Good luck

Mick

Jeremy

You'll know when you've found a good carpet store.

Ask to listen to some carpets, and go with the one with the most polite response.

Duralay is a manufacturer with a wide range of qualities. You want Duralay Treadmore and probably a room sized remnant like Mick suggests though £10 - £15/m2 on a remnant should get you a good quality carpet. I bought some carpet here but they are not such good value for underlay.
If you want to organise your own fitter you could phone them and ask for a quote to supply the Treadmore and fit with your carpet.

Carpet is a funny old game.

you need too look for a product which is going to meet your needs, and possibly be in place for a number of room decorations.

For this as Mr Parry suggests, you need to spend a few bob. I am not sure 40 quid a metre is totally needed though.

A decent quality carpet purchased from a shop will come in at around £20 per metre fitted, for this you will expect a resonable underlay. There are many on the market, however the trends today right now are for light weight thick underlays such as cloud seven or the better nine.

Also there is a move in the carpet fitting industry towards 'American fitting' A method wherebye the underlay is glued to the floor then the carpet glued to the underlay.

This has some obvious advantages, stretching is not going to happen, nor is the need for gripper rods, handy if you need to preserve a tidy parkey floor, or hard concrete which is a bitch to fit gripper too. However a total cak t replace.


If I were you, I would be looking at weight a 40 or 50 oz carpet is coming in at the very good end of the market, the pile is thick and the tufts very tight together, its nice for the fitter to install and will last a very long time. The down side to this type of carpet is price (of course) and pile reversal, a kind of denial thing in the carpet industry, but does happen, many good carpets are spoiled by an apparent random pile movement, nothing to do with fitting, but does result in heavy shading, and unfortunately Mr Parrys kind of expenditure does not always stop this.


If looking for a woven carpet such as Wilton or Axminster be very very careful of what you purchase. The Wilton Royal moniker was bought some 7 years ago and Wilton carpet sold under the royal banner although of a decent quality is little more than hessian stuck back twist pile.

However purchase direct from Wilton carpets in Wilton, (3 miles from Salisbury) then you will not only get expert and friendly service but also a proper woven carpet which is in fact the original 'Wilton Carpet brand'

Axminster equally sold out and the Axminster weave is actually carried out all over the world. A popular method is two weaves take place back to back and then the carpet is literally cut down between the two backings to produce two whole carpets! Its amazing actually.

My personal opinon is to check the quality of the carpet by the following:

weight (should be stated)
Thickness of pile (feel it)
Ingredients(Wool carpets are hard wearing, but they are hollow fibres so suck up spills and keep them)
Ingredients (all false fibres such as polypropoline are none staining but prone to burns such as fag burns, and you will get static shocks a plenty)
Colour (if the colour is really out there, consider if it will look that way in a few years)
Pattern(I realy cannot recommend a pattern at this junction, unless it is a. bespoke, b. really tasteful!)

Consider also wood effect flooring, there are far to many benifits to mention, and although Lew welin bowen tried to buck the trend, wood flooring is still very popular, and there are some seriously tidy rugs out there. Clip together wood block can be had for like £3.99 a metre as well, that is much cheaper than carpet when you consider the wear of the product.

Have fun.

I almost garentee it was an axminster probably in the famous orange flame, or the even more hideous aztec pattern.

By the nature of the production aximinster could conjour up more complicated designs and as such tended to appear in pubs and posh to-do houses up and down the country, Infact the processes of making axminster seemed to suggest that a hideous design was a pre requeist, although of corse I am probably wrong.

Wilton on the other hand seemed to have the dying process 'down' so could risk a run of similar colour, even dare I say it one singlualr colour running over a whole process.

Suffice to say that to this day many a pub is still displaying some very intricate axminster patterns, but suffering the decision to a.replace a carpet which to all intents and purposes has been walked on 90% of its life, had beer and fags dropped on it 90% of its life but still looks good or b. change all the decor, (noramally involving a painting of the ceiling) to fit in with the hideous array of coulour on the floor.

Suffice to say that the 'tradition' of the classic tradiontial English pub is dictated by the varied shaded green aximinster and how the typcally terricota or beige walls stained from many a fag fit in with it.

The axminster carpet has a lot to answer for.

So does my spelling.

Thanks for the advice, all - much appreciated.

--J

Belatedly, I've ordered my carpet: 80/20, 50oz, Treadmore, end of roll bargain. It doesn't have a woven back, though. I'd have had to pay £40+ /m^2 for that.

[I was rather surprised to find my old carpet's underlay was some strange fibrous stuff, which might partly explain why it wore out more quickly than the others].

Thanks again.

Beat it Son, beat it.


Fritz Von Bagger

I am seriously impressed by garyi's extensive knowledge of all things carpet.

Mr Tibbs

As this rugged chap recently said to me, "You just can't let people walk all over you !"


Fritz Von Taxminster