trying to find a way to afford carpeting 2 flights of stairs and an upstairs landing

[Rosebag]

Can anyone help? We moved in to our house about 8 years ago and I have lived since with a ghastly (but nevertheless good quality) brown carpet on the two flights, the upstairs landing (big area) and all of the first floor bedrooms as well. The carpet on the stairs is now starting to show a lot of wear and worn patches, and I haven't learned to love the colour....(hate brown).

Whilst we could replace the carpet on the first flight (where the wear and tear is showing), it will look weird with the old carpet on the landing and the second flight...and to a lesser extent the bedrooms on the first floor.

DH is very anti...says it'll cost thousands to re carpet the entire space concerned (he's not wrong of course,) but I can't stand it and am looking for a solution. We have hard floors throughout the downstairs and I am not keen for more...too noisy with 5 people clattering up and down all the time. Any creative ideas to address the problem? Grateful for your views.

I think we carpeted our stairs and landing for about £300. Why don't you get someone round to do a no obligation quote, then at least you'll know what you're dealing with.

We re-carpeted our 2 flights of stairs and 2 landings (although sounds as though your house is grander than ours as our landings are normal size!) and with an expensive ish wool twist carpet, free underlay and the fitting it was about £800 - much much less than we expected. This was through an independent local carpet shop.

I would get measured up and find out what it would actually cost to do what you want, and try some cut-price carpet places - what area are you in? Nearish to us there is a place on an industrial estate that does roll ends etc and we got a great deal for our rental house to recarpet the living room with a very very good quality carpet, it was just an odd roll they had in (perfectly nice colour, nothing swirly or offensive). You might get less choice that way, but it will be cheaper. Our neighbours did a single set of stairs plus hall and landing (like you, we have hard wood floors downstairs so didn't have to carpet our hall) for less than £300 through the cut-price carpet place.

Great minds, neolara!

I have just paid £1000 for 4 bedrooms 2 large landings and 2 flights of stairs.
I am sure the stairs themselves would not have been more than a few hundred.

I got carpet remnants from our local carpet shop. It sounds mad (ours was a wallet busting 70sqm) but with a bit of time and effort, we managed to get remnants close enough in colour to really not be noticeable. We have a half landing, which meant the whole stair area had to be closest, but the top landing (huge, room sized) is slightly different, and only we notice - honest!

I agree with everyone else , go to a local independent shop it's really not that expensive , and hopefully you can reuse the existing grippers etc.

I bought runners, and laid myself. Much cheaper than carpet.

We have a long flight of stairs, then a BIG landing (well, long and thin), then another flight of stairs, then another, smaller landing, and then we went into a little room on the top floor we use as a study. We recarpeted all that (new underlay, gripper rods, fitting and everything, for under £1000. I think it would certainly be worth you getting quotes to see what you might be looking at. Oh, and it varies a lot - small independent we went with in the end... the whol "free fitting" thing with the bigger chaoins is negated when they actually tell you you'll need yards more carpet than you do

Thank you all SO much!! I am going to show this thread to DH as the cost needn't be that awful or so it sounds from your experience.... May I ask about grades of carpet you used? I would be wanting something extremely hard wearing, which would stand up to a family of 5 (including 3 gerlumphing teens...).

missnevermind I have an agenda re. the bedrooms...also have 4 to do, but DH seems to think including them would come to about 5 grand!

emsyj, we are in the North London suburbs...I doubt our place is grander than yours....it's just a maximally extended, loft- converted semi on a wide-ish plot.

Sounds like independent carpet suppliers/fitters is the way to go. Any recommendations in North London gratefully received.

Ours is an 80/20 wool twist 'for areas of very heavy use' - i.e. stairs & halls. I think our neighbours who got a cheaper deal on a roll end have Berber type stuff (the type of carpet that would take all the skin off your knees if you fell on it kinda thing - looks nice tho).

We live in a 1930s ugly pebbledashed semi with a loft conversion and a full width extension across the back - but in the north west . There is literally not an inch left that we could extend, this is as big as this house is ever going to get and I think (thank goodness) that DH has finally accepted that!

5 grand!
Bedroom carpets don't need to be as hardwearing as stairs, or even your living room... generally people don't tend to walk about a lot in them, and if the do, it doesn't tend to be in heavy shoes. We have one very big bedroom which we recarpeted for under £400 a couple of years ago, the smaller ones we've done for a LOT less, as you can often pick up 'end of rolls' the shops want to get rid of.
I can't see that you would spend more than £2.5K tops to do all 4 rooms + stairs and landing, and I'm confident you could do it for less, and even if it is that much, you could do it in stages - room by room.