Can’t afford to carpet my council house

[Florafloral]

I have recently moved into a council house with my 5 year old after being made homeless. It’s a new build so All rooms are painted which I’m grateful for but I can’t afford to carpet it. It’s concrete flooring throughout which is impossible to keep clean, is very powdery and dusty. It’s making our clothes and furniture dusty too. I applied for a grant for flooring with the council but was turned down because my DD isn’t under 3 and we have no health conditions. Does anyone have any tips or how I can try and get cheap flooring. I’ve been quoted over £2000 for the whole house. It just seems impossible

Try Pay Weekly Carpets

Oh the insanity of council housing. They remove flooring before they relet if it wasn't put down by them.

Those colourful interlocking foam tiles that children play on might be a cheap interim solution. You might be able to get some cheap in charity shops or secondhand on local selling pages or gumtree etc.

Are you on benefits? You may be able to apply for a budget loan of £812 which is interest free & repaid through your benefits.

Do you have somewhere like Carpets4less near you? They have aisles full of remnants. Sometimes very cheap, and just get it done room by room?

A carpet shop near me has a carpet of the month every month for no more than £18 per square metre including underlay & fitting.

A quick way to solve the dust problem, until you can get a longer term fix, is to paint the floors with a concrete sealant. There're several types available, have a look at B&Q to find one suitable for your situation.

Other ideas are plastic woven rugs for the kitchen, woven coir floor tiles, lino/vinyl off cuts.

FB marketplace/ local free pages
Ask for any rugs/ carpet remnants
Some people redecorate and change everything so you may well be lucky
CAB may know of local charities you can apply to
There may be a local charity who redistribute donated furniture/ white goods and just about everything needed to set up home(!) so do check
You can buy sealant for the concrete floor which would keep the dust down and protect it
Many congratulations on your new home

People pay a lot for concrete floors- get some floor sealant as suggested. It will look great.

then Facebook marketplace or Ikea if the budget allows for rugs and playmats

also look at pay weekly carpets, i had that done when i started in my first council home. was £10 a week

Good job it's not the middle of winter OP. Try using Facebook Marketplace to request old carpets/rugs for the time being, give your measurements, people find it a pain to get rid of carpet - think some councils charge now for bulky collection - so you might get lucky if you can collect it.

Is there a local children’s centre in your area they often help with families in need. I would say this is a need. £2000 is a lot of money when you’re just starting out. Approach them and ask for help. I second Lino for bathroom and kitchen though. And rugs for other room for now. Definitely try and do a room at a time.

I work with the local authorities/housing association.

It’s standard that flooring is the customers responsibility and is clearly stated within their tenancy agreement.

Void teams won’t leave carpets in due to pest control, hygiene and health and safety hazzards.

In one local LA, they trialled leaving carpets in however was hugely unsuccessful, due to issues with fleas, bed and furniture bugs, carpet beetles, vermin under floor boards, wood worm in floorboards, broken or squeaky floorboards… urine and human pet sodden vinyl/ carpets, preservation/damp/burst pipes in concrete flooring etc… to name a few…

we’ve even seen maggot and fly larvae , now we all wish customers are all Mrs Hinch but the sad reality is a good percentage of customers are living in poor, hoarding or squalid conditions due to a number of factors.m

Councils can't let properties without cleanable water tight floors in the bathroom and kitchen. So those will be done already

Definitely shop around , even look at cut offs and do one room at a time if need be.
Do you know anyone who could fit it for you ?

I started off same way I didn't have alot of money but you will get there . I'm surprised they haven't given you anything to help surely you could get a grant or some kind of a charity that could help you out a bit?

Those individual tiles that are self-adhesive might seem a quick cheap fix btw, but they're murder to prise up when you are in a position to re-do the floor. Horrible gluey mess.

Dunelm sells large washable rugs for just over £100. Could you seal the concrete floor and get a couple of these rugs until you can afford carpet?

Yes. I’ve been in social housing since 1974, and I have never moved into a place with either carpeting or recent decorating. That’s how it is.

Councils can't let properties without cleanable water tight floors in the bathroom and kitchen. So those will be done already

This isn’t true and is a myth, the regulatory requirement is that kitchen and bathroom floors must be ply-ed or screeded, they do not have to provide floor/decorative coverings.

Indeed. I said that but the ‘concrete throughout’ and ‘need to carpet the whole house’ persists. If this is real, there’ll only be one room downstairs to carpet - the lounge. The bedrooms will have floorboards not concrete 🙄

Hope we haven’t scared the off, with all these sensible suggestions. 🤔

You can buy Lino on Amazon for about £100 per room

Is the price quoted just for the carpets or also the fitting?

I fitted my carpets myself; it doesn't take too much skill, provided your rooms are rectangular. Grips around the outside, underlay, then carpet on top and cut with a good knife.

Perhaps that way, you'll be able to save at least some of the cost and do each room up as and when you can afford?

Just do one room at a time as you can afford it…

Oh and be grateful you’ve got a house

Just get cheap rugs or offcuts to cover as much of the floor as possible and then do carpet or vinyl as you can afford it. Amazon has many very cheap rugs of different sizes.

From experience, you need to prioritise in this order;

Kitchen/bathroom vinyl if there isn't already some or vinyl tiles in place - usually very cheap because the spaces are very small. Sticky tiles are OK if they're on sale in the poundshop (it's where I got some for my old flat's bathroom), but they're not as durable as a sheet of vinyl.

A covering on the ground floor to make the most difference in winter - definitely add in some thermal underlay, anything is better than nothing. So hallway and living room. Depending upon the size, the hall can usually be done with a very cheap offcut and you just make do with the largest area you can covered in the living room.

Rugs by each bed.

Stairs - whilst bare treads can be fashionable in warmer homes, that's unlikely with most social housing and stacking on them hurts. Depending upon the width, it could be more realistic to buy three cheap runners and then fix them with carpet tacks than expect to fully fit carpet at first, possibly if they're quite wide, painting either side will mean it looks better.

Landing - could be another offcut tacked down.

That's enough to keep you all warm enough until you can gradually get together the funds to have the floors done properly over the coming months/years.

And practically, if you're bothered about fitting vinyl, I found that giving the edges a blast with a hairdryer made them soft enough to cut through easily and neatly right up against the skirting with a Stanley blade.