the great carpet vs. wood floor debate

[DancingLady]

I need advice. We bought a 4-storey house a few years ago. It's about 100sq m, not huge just tall and narrow. Everywhere except bathrooms and kitchen has cream carpet (there when we moved in), now grubby and stained. Hallway, living room and DD's room worst.

WWYD? I think my options are:

hire a carpet cleaner (HOW DOES THIS WORK? do you move all the furniture out of a room?)

get rid of carpets and have wood floors (too noisy in a house with lots of stairs and levels? Not practical with 3-yo-DD? Plus no idea what state the floorboards are in, although i LOVE the look of wood floors)

Replace the carpet? (my least fave option)

Anyone ditched their wall-to-wall and regretted it?

We have bamboo in the lounge, dining room and hall. Carpet on stairs, landing and bedrooms. Horrible vinyl tiles in the kitchen and porch (can't replace them because the floor is flush with the outside door so would have to dig down to create the required depth).

The bamboo is so easy to keep clean. 1 year down and still looks new.

I've never heard of bamboo flooring, will look it up, thanks! Intrigued.

Yes thought maybe stairs would be best carpeted, for safety more than anything else.

I'm about to start renovating/extending our home and I can't wait to pull up the manky carpets and either sand the floorboards or put real/engineered wood down.
The plan is for wood (I love the look too!) in the kitchen/diner and family room, and hallway and stairs (with runner) and then carpets upstairs and in the sitting room (ideally a child-free evening retreat!)

We got Dark Bamboo Plank Flooring although we got it for an absolute steal on ebay. We ended up with 35 boxes for £400.

If you know anyone with a Makro card, they tend to sell it for £11 per box plus VAT.

We live in a 4-storey townhouse, and yes, yes to wood - I love it. However, my children are getting older and we only have some wood, it's still mostly carpet...

But, cleaning carpet isn't really as much of a biggie as I think you fear. We have a vax carpet cleaner. It wasn't cheap, but not that expensive either (less than £200 for a really good model). It takes a little while, (think allow a couple of hours to do a good size room) - but it really does get the carpet fantastically clean. I just moved the moveable furniture and then worked around what couldn't be moved - it was all fully dry in a couple of hours.

Thanks for the tip!

I always wanted wood floors but when we moved we just wanted to be in and unpacked - but I'm still hankering after nice floorboards...

Hellie - yes think solid carpeted stairs might look odd, considering wood with a runner for noise/comfort/safety as well as aesthetics!

I think a runner can look really stylish too. Well I'm hoping so :) and cheaper than a fully carpeted stair but with the same benefits (mainly noise reduction and safety).

Guinevere - there's a place near me that hires carpet cleaners for about £20 for a weekend... Think it'd be sooo satisfying to clean my filthy carpet...

Think I'm looking for an excuse to have wood floors tbh. The more I think about it the more I think it'd transform our house and make it feel more spacious (feels like living on a ladder sometimes).

We ripped up a rancid cream carpet after two years of trying to clean the fucker (with my expensive vax machine). I painted the floorboards and put big rugs down in all the rooms. The stairs are noisy, and we're considering a runner but worried that the cats will just consider it a giant scratching post! So much easier to keep clean with a cheap lightweight Hoover and a squeegee mop (that doesn't go round very often). Dust bunnies the size of actual bunnies though.