New Carpet

[MikeD]

I need to purchase some new carpet (or possibly some wood flooring), and have never done so before. I'm going to start with Empire Carpet to get the estimate, as well as some local shops. Anyone have any feedback for me?

I'm more concerned about the quality of service we're going to receive, not the product we're going to buy. If you've used any of the national guys, I'd be interested to hear how things went for you.

TIA!

[Napoleon54]

New carpet? That's what happens when the girlfriend runs out of razor blades...

[Prngr44]

Diy!

[MrGreg]

Upgrading the pad is more important than upgrading the carpet.

[guiseppewv]

New carpet? That's what happens when the girlfriend runs out of razor blades...

Doh!!!

[Kevster]

Diy!

As the son of a carpet installer, you really shouldn't do it yourself unless they're high-traffic industrial carpet squares. Carpet installation, especially residential, can look very easy when done by a seasoned journeyman. More than once my Dad has had to fix a bad install job because the homeowner didn't stretch the carpet he installed and it rolled up in places or tried to do a seam only to screw it up and it became a trip hazzard because the carpet came up and started to fray. One job in particular, an apprentice installed a room only to have it the carpet pattern run the same direction as the carpet in the hallway and it looked like crap (the pattern didn't match up and was completely obvious). Unless you have the right tools to make it look good (ie carpet stretcher, seam iron, kicker, etc) it will look like crap and you will have wasted a LOT of money on material only to have a carpet installer come in and try to fix it.

Now, if you want a good carpet, you need to ask yourself a few questions:

What kind of carpet do I want? Berber? Loop? Sculpted? Textured? Frieze/Twist? *gasp* leopard print?
How high/thick a pile do I want?
How dense a weave to I want?
How much traffic should I expect this carpet to take?
Stainmaster or no Stainmaster?
More expensive pad or cheap pad?
And last but not least... what colors should I get to match the house?

I recently had the carpet replaced in the house I'm moving out of, and we looked at Mohawk and Shaw. Whatever you do, don't go with a cheap carpet. You'll be tearing it out in a few years because it wore out very quickly or lost all it's pile after you used a vacuum on it three or four times.

[MikeD]

...

Thanks homie. Good advice. We're going to shop around, hope to have something picked out by this weekend. Defnitely going to leave it to the pros, and will heed your "...get what you pay for" advice.