Cutting the cost of carpets

[hoppingmad]

Looking for some advice.
We are on a very tight budget to carpet a whole house!

I have been looking online and wondered if I'm being crazy ordering my carpets and underlay myself?

I have found a couple of websites for cheap carpet including one called onlinecarpets which seem to have a good range in cheap carpets and I have also found cheap underlay at tradepriced

I have an independent fitter coming tomorrow to give me a quote for laying the carpets

Has anyone done it this way and if so is it a good idea? Any pitfalls to look out for or tips?

Who would be responsible for measuring as that's where mistakes might be made. I like the idea of an independent fitter, surely they'll have access to trade discounts.

The fitter is measuring. Just got my quote from a carpet shop and even with the cheapest carpets they do it's high. Mind you the cheapest they sell is £10 a square metre whereas online I can get it for about £3.99
The quality won't be great but it would give us a couple of years to get back on our feet and then upgrade a room at a time.

Does that sound like false economy though?

I don't think a carpet at £3.99 is necessarily false economy (we spent a similar amount 3 years ago when we needed to carpet the whole house) but think about the colour and the texture. We had a slightly textured carpet - you know a little bit like sisal carpet, and where it gets lots of traffic (i.e. the stairs), the raised texture has reduced so it looks a little flat in places compared to non-worn parts. Does that make sense? I think more expensive (perhaps thicker?) carpet can cope better with heavy traffic. Also you can differentiate your underlay - you don't need expensive underlay in say the bedrooms, but spend as much as you can on the stairs / hall / landing etc.

Also, go to a carpet shop and see what deals they're doing - some will fit for free if you buy the underlay for instance.

Failing that, do you live in a house with odd shaped rooms? My husband (fairly good at DIY) fitted the carpet himself in all of the bedrooms and the dining room (fairly basic square rooms). We only paid for a fitter for stairs / landing and the lounge window which has a large bay window and needed 2 widths of carpet.