The Great Big Carpet Change

[BoffinMum]

My carpets have been down since 1997 and are really thin now. I need to replace all of them, which amounts to 7 rooms plus hall stairs and landing (other rooms have wood/lino). I want to lay a nice cream wool carpet with a fleck and a bit of weave, and I want to put this acoustic underlay stuff under it to minimise noise:

Acoustilay

I have tried dealing with local firms but they are making a monumental fuss about the fact that we are living in the house and also possess furniture. I am apparently supposed to either move out, or take two days off work with my DH and personally move the furniture out to adjacent rooms so they can lay the carpet, and then move it all back. This I cannot do.

One (otherwise reputable) firm offered to get someone in to do the furniture moving and laying, but they are now being impossible to contact - they never answer the phone in person, weeks can go by if you leave a message and then invariably they leave a message for us as we are in meetings, and the phone tag goes on and on.

I tried John Lewis, but they won't have anything to do with Acoustilay (which incidentally is designed so that normal carpet fitters can lay it easily).

I was wondering therefore if anyone was able to recommend a firm within a couple of hours of Cambridge that might be able to sort all this out for us? I ave been trying to get this done for 11 months now ...

I find this incomprehensible.

Move stuff out of living room into kitchen
Get living room carpeted.
Move stuff back out of kitchen, into living room.

Get hall, stairs, landing done.

Move stuff out of master bedroom into smaller bedrooms.

Get master bedroom carpeted.

Move stuff back into master bedroom.

Rinse, and repeat.

One room carpeted each day or two, to give you a breather from moving stuff.

A lot of companies ime won't do that, minke, if you're having the same carpet everywhere. They come out with a huge roll of it and won't cut a bit, pack the rest up and come back with the rest of the roll again and again.

Have you tried local moving companies to see if you could hire a couple of guys for a day? Alternatively, seeing as its a university town, the place must be crawling with students eager to earn a few pounds.

Personally I'd still want to be around to supervise. Sil arranged something similar but when she got home the wrong colour had been delivered. Nobody noticed the mistake and the whole house had been fitted before she saw it. I think you'll have to take holidays regardless of who moves the furniture.

They'd have to be fairly inept not to be able to cut the correct amount of meterage for each room, in advance.

I'm gobsmacked they aren't wanting such a big job.

Oh...sorry, just re read OP....I just saw, you and DH won't stick around to help move furniture. That's why you can't get it done.

Insurance, liability..nobody will touch it, if you aren't willing to be present and help out.

We just had 5 bedrooms and stairs and landing carpeted. We used Carpet Right.

We did the 2 smaller bedrooms in one day, 2 more bedrooms another day, and master bedroom and stairs/landing another day. So it took 3 days altogether. We gave ourselves a bit of breathing space by not fitting over consecutive days and giving ourselves a few days to move the furniture back in.

We cleared most of the furniture out the night before and shoved it into ensuite bathrooms/ anywhere we could. We left the beds in without mattresses. The carpet fitters were happy to fit with the beds left in and just moved it from one end of the room to the other. The carpet fitters were happy to help shift one or 2 items of furniture in each room. We took drawers out of chests of drawers so they could be moved fairly easily by one person. We found as long as you make a big effort to clear most of the furniture out, they will help out a bit.

On the morning of each carpet fit, we ripped up the carpet and underlay and threw them out of the window (!!) (and took to tip later in week) as it would have cost us more to get the carpet fitters to do this.

We found Carpet Right to be very helpful and didn't mess us around, but I think this varies from branch to branch. They cut the carpet ready for each room in the warehouse and just brought the sizes needed for fitting that day.

I was dreading the whole thing but it was fairly painless and we are so glad to get rid of the old smelly carpets!

We found it confusing that Carpet Right permanently have a sale on. But we watched the prices carefully and worked out that they have something called 'Carpet Madness' 3 or 4 times a year, when prices are quite a bit lower. We got a 100% wool carpet for about £10/sq metre. They might do soundproof underlay?

I was there to be supervise and check off the work before I paid the fitters. I was able to tell them which way to lay the slightly ribbed carpet on the stairs. They gave me a half day window and phoned me on the day to tell me exactly what time they would arrive.

I am happy to take a couple of days off to supervise, I just can't keep taking odd days off over weeks and weeks while we do it little by little.

Minkah, I can't move the furniture as I have a disability, and DH works very long hours in London.

How do other disabled people get carpets laid, I wonder? Or elderly people? The while industry seems to assume there are able bodied customers on hand the whole time. The removal business and delivery businesses manage to move things, why not the carpet industry?

This is very strange for them to not to do. I have family who run an independent carpet shop (nowhere near Cambridge though) and they usually cut carpet to size in advance, turn up, empty a room, lay, refill room. Usually 4-5 rooms per day for something like this but could be more or less depending on size/amount of furniture. If it is a massive job, they either spread it over a couple of days, get an extra pair of hands in to help with moving stuff or work an extra long day to get it finished in one go.

Not sure why this should be such a struggle for a big company to do really.

Surely this would apply to any little old lady who simply cannot move furniture themselves. They are clearly being arseholes. It will come under the whole insurance/injury crap.

Boffin have you any mates who could come and shift furniture of an evening so that fitting can be done the next day?

We did what Briony did whereby you have it done over time rather than in one day. Shifted my youngest son into oldest son's bedroom for a couple of nights, had bedroom furniture wherever we could put it for a day or two.

Someone local has recommended this firm, who do the whole lot. I have made an appointment for them to come out to measure.

Glasswells

Subhuman, I know what you mean. There's about as much point arguing that people 'should' move the furniture or 'should' get friends to help or 'should' do one room a week for seven weeks as there is arguing that a house removal firm shouldn't have to lift things as it's the customer's responsibility to do that as well, as I said.

It is perfectly possible for professionals to do this and charge the customer accordingly. It is really bizarre, I think, just to assume untrained people can hump all their furniture about without physical consequences and with no reference at all to the age and physical condition of the customer. I would even go as far as to say it's rather arrogant to expect them to do so. Similarly to give up seven days' annual leave so things are convenient for a carpet fitter is just bizarre as well, when you are spending literally thousands of pounds on something and the profit margin is reasonable.

One firm actually said, "Our people don't do it because if they hurt themselves they won't be able to work". Eh? They think I will be able to work if I hurt myself? What that translates as is that they can't be bothered to train their people in heavy lifting techniques, or to provide the correct trolleys, and they want to flog their carpet but load any consequences for fitting it onto the customer wherever possible, whilst making everyone think they are doing the customer a big favour.

I mean, it's all a bit 1973, isn't it? Anyway, I think firms that refuse to so this stuff will eventually go out of business, just like the electrical firms did that sold small appliances without plugs on the end because they thought they could get away with it. And the property developers who sold new houses with unpainted walls and zero flooring and no grass out the back. There is a serious economy of scale and effort in professionals doing this stuff for people in the first instance, which is why we have all moved on.

TJ flooring in Witchford have done all our carpets and are really good. We have only really had one room at a time done so have always moved the furniture out ourselves but they moved the furniture when replacing my mums carpet.

www.tj-flooring.co.uk

Cheers Jaspercat, I will look into that.

Carpet right will do it in sections. You order the entire carpet. They cut each room it in the warehouse. You sort out a few rooms they come and do those. Then then you re book the fitters when the other rooms are clear.

When I inquired in Carpetright they said they could work around 5 pieces of furniture and they could do 2 rooms with the same carpet separately

I wouldn't use CarpetRight because of who owns them. And rebooking the fitters four times with presumably a fortnight's gap between each one while they deign to visit is a total joke anyway!

We didn't have to wait a fortnight between fittings and they will move 5 bits of furniture which reduces a lot of the logistical stress!

Have you tried John Lewis as they have a good selection of carpet, don't know what their fitting is like though

Sorry just seen you had