...to think I can fit my own carpet?

[stubbornstains]

We're moving house in a couple of weeks. New build, empty house, get the keys on the 14th and have a week to move in. I had a carpet fitter booked for the morning of the 16th, but he's just blown me out. I've already bought the carpet- it's waiting for me at the shop- it's a Shetland cream wool (not as expensive as it sounds- it was a sale bargain). I'm planning to do the 2 bedrooms, upstairs landing and stairs.

I'm going to be fitting engineered wood flooring downstairs myself anyway - WIBU to think "sod running around trying to find another fitter, let's just buy the necessary gubbins (whatever they are! I don't even know what I need!) and crack on with it?

Carpets are easy to fit, a lot of people do them themselves. Stairs are a pain though!

However, doing the bedrooms should be easy. You do not need to buy nails for gripper rods, they usually already have them in them. You don't 'need a special knife' , Stanley knives are pretty standard , you don't need a 'carpet chisel', you can tuck with a flat headed screwdriver (and some fitters do).

You only need grippers if you are using underlay, otherwise the edges will be up higher than the rest of the carpet

Whether you need underlay depends on the backing on the carpet.

If you want to buy a kicker for stretching, they are cheap.

Phew! I was coming on here to say that the one thing I remember Sarah Beany saying was 'buy cheap carpets if you want but always have them professionally fitted - it makes a world of difference'. Hope it all works out.

YABU to think you can fit it well.

Ah it'll be fiiine. Me & DH laid our living room carpet, it looks perfect. The knee kicker only costs about 30 quid.

We found our carpet fitter through Facebook, In posted on one of those "Buy Swap and Sell [location]" pages and got loads of replies and quotes sent to my inbox - we went through someone who had previous reviews ect. Got the front room done for £30 on a Sunday!

It's a lot harder than it looks.

It took me and my DP hours to fit a hallway carpet in my first flat. So many shapes to cut around doors. It was so difficult to stretch it over the gripper strips and up to the wall in a way that you don't see the cut edge. When it's done by a professional it looks so much better.

You need a carpet fitter unless you are trained yourself OP.
The tension needs to be right and you need the right tools for this.

I have done lots of carpets and my stairs twice now.

The first time I measured and cut each step the second I took a carpet along the upstairs landing cut round the banister and run down the stairs.

The first was easier and looked sharper. The second I cheated and used carpet with a fine line so I could follow for a cut. It was unwieldy to do in one piece though.

It has been down 4 years or so now with no problems.

When I was on my own for years, I taught myself to do any number of things from plumbing to tiling to plastering. I laid carpets in rooms, reseated floorboards and installed a shower. There is no way I would have put myself through the drama of carpeting stairs!

I got a friend who was a carpet fitter to come and do it and paid in babysitting for their children and a couple of meals cooked and frozen.

I almost miss those days of skills bartering

I have done it myself. It was shit

I did 2 bedroom carpets myself, but they were pre-stretched - as in, they'd been professionally laid in a different house with bigger rooms, and I took them with me when I moved to the smaller house (nasty break-up situation).
Even with them being pre-stretched, it was still quite hard to get it done well enough without bulges - one of them was fine, the other, not quite so good. My stanley knife went blunt twice while I was doing it as well (hessian backed, high wool content, for high traffic)

Stairs - wouldn't dream of doing it myself using gripper rods, would do it with tacks or with stair rods though. Stair rods aren't very common these days, though, so probably not the best idea.

Anyway - glad you've got a fitter, best plan all round - MASSIVE difference between fitting a fabric stretchable floor covering, and a solid, fits together wood floor covering!

I always said I don't mind doing the bedrooms as they are generally low-footfall rooms.

However, due to incredible lack of money, we were faced with either sitting looking at a roll of carpet for months for living room (high thoroughfare room - people walk through to get to other rooms, upstairs etc) or me fitting it. I took my time and it was possible using very little tools (no money to buy any). I had a stanley blade and hubby and I used our feet to stretch the carpet by scuffing along it in the direction it was being laid.

I would always pay a professional to do it, but I have to say, I made a pretty damn good job and am really chuffed with the outcome. I don't see how a professional would have made it look any different.

Just...no. I cried about 20 times trying to do a sitting room. It is much harder than it looks.

I'm a 'sharp knife and nails' girl. It worked (although it was a few decades ago, my standards may have risen since then). What is this knee stretcher thing that you speak of?

One of these - you hook it into the carpet, and then use your knee to thwack it towards the gripper rods so that the carpet is stretched onto them.

I have fitted my own bedroom carpets a few times and it looks great! But no way would I consider doing stair and landing, house I moved into had a stair carpet that was loose and bloody dangerous as the previous tenants fitted it there self, you need special tools to stretch the carpet for the stairs

My dad has been a carpet fitter for 50 years. At the moment he's been trying to retire, but is really really busy.
I'd say about 60% of his business is refitting carpets that have been bollocksed up by people who watched a YouTube video and thought "I can do that..."

I'm an engineer so not bad with my hands. I can fit a wooden floor all day long, but hell would freeze over before I'd fit my own carpet. It's a real skill, and despite what people may claim their own look like, you can ALWAYS tell the difference between a professional job and a DIY one.

Absolutely DON'T do it! Carpet fitting, much like plastering, is more of an art than a skill and as others have said, one wrong move and you've wasted a lot of time and money.

I can tackle pretty much any job you can throw at me around the house with reasonable success, but 'reasonable success' with carpet fitting will result in a noticeably poor finish. We just moved into a new house and I had to take up some fitted carpet to access pipework. Could I get the professionally fitted carpet to go back down exactly the way it was? could I heck!

Hold fire and wait until you can find a fitter with experience.