Poll: Flooring Advice please! Home owners or contractors, over here!

[jonnyGURU]

We're looking at an old house now.

The only complaint is the flooring.

The living room and dining room are just tile. The bedrooms are fairly new but were installed poorly (wrinkles in carpet. Wasn't stretched right.) and were installed in the bathroom too.

The first thing that has to go is the carpet in the bathroom. That needs tile.

Second, in my mind, would be to carpet the living room (10' X 20') and the dining room (9' X 17').

Eventually, I would like to redo the carpet in the bedrooms (2 @ 12 X 10 and master @ 15 X 11).

Should I:

1. Do it as I said above as I can afford it.
2. Do it all in one shot to possibly get a "package deal" from the same contractor and finance the cost.
3. Forget it, I've got more important things to deal with.

ANY input would be appreciated.

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Probably pay as you go, though if you get a really great deal it might make sense to do it all at once. Here in MI Home Depot is running a special right now on flooring we are taking advantage of, purchase/install by the end of 2000 and you get 12 mos same as cash. We're getting carpet and some pergo.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hmm...

How much would something like that be for a total of about 1500 sq feet???

BTW, Thanks!

 

[rahvin]

Do it yourself. Isn't this the DIY board? I tiled my two bathrooms. Key to tiling a bathroom is to make sure you have another bathroom to use while you tile it.

 

[jonnyGURU]

No problem there. Got two!

Was tiling hard? What about cutting the tile? Did it come out fine? Hmm.... Something to think about.

Like I said, if I do one "project" at a time, it'd be the bathroom first. There's a big water stain in front of each bathtub because someone wasn't smart enough to figure out that CARPET ABSORBS WATER.

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

Well the carpet I liked the most in our price range ($1.99/sq ft installed w/8lb padding) would run approx $3000 for your house (if you did it entirely in carpting). Pergo was more like $5-ish per sqft installed.

I'll bet you could do the tile yourself, a lot of the tile stores as well as the big mega-marts (Home Depot) run these clinics all the time for do-it-yourselfers. And you can rent the tools you need like the tile cutter.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hmm... Sounds like I could do the bathrooms (the first thing I'd like to do) myself and then just do the living room dinig room next after saving up some $$$ (I'll be house poor after down and closing).

If the roof, A/C, water heater and paint wasn't new, I wouldn't bother. :Q

 

[burnedout]

We've been laying the tile as we go here. Caught some on special at $.90 a square foot. Did one bedroom and the hallway. It's can be a mess. Also somewhat tedious cutting and fitting the corner and end pieces.

Make sure you remove the baseboards and re-paint/re-finish them in the process.

Go to Home Depot for one of those Do It Yourself clinics. Helps quite a bit. If you actually do it yourself, start with the smallest room (the bathroom I would think).

If you don't have the time, then use a recommended and trusted contractor. I've heard some horror stories.

Good luck.

 

[jonnyGURU]

OK... That's three votes for DIY on the tile!



Cool... so if I do that, and then only carpet the dining room and living room and leave the bedrooms alone, it should cost me around $700 at Yo_Ma-Ma's price.

How much more was labor on the carpet, Yo_Ma-Ma?

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

It includes the labor (come to house, measure and install), $1.99 (plus tax) per sqft also included the padding. Some carpet was under $1/sqft but did not include the padding and labor.

 

[ultravox]

DIY for the tile..I just re-did my kitchen and it went well. You can rent the electric tile saw or some stores will lend it to you. Grouting is trickier. Buy those little x's for spacing the tiles and it should go smoothly and evenly.....chalk lines help also. It's a week-end job laying tiles one day and drying over night, then grouting the next day and cleaning up which is probably the worst part. BTW...the most crucial thing in laying tiles is the surface underneath...ideally it will be pristine.
As for carpeting, approach it as you would automobiles, brand new sh*tbox or a used high-zoot jewel......if you go to a large carpet specialist, you can find balance of stock carpeting that might sell for $45/sq.yd reduced to a cheap price for the roll. I got some really good stuff for my basement for about $200. Cheap carpet will look like crap in 3yrs. Go for the gold. Laying carpet's a cinch if you're good with a knife. Rent one of those knee-kick stretchers and you're laughing.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Cool!

You guys helped a LOT!

The biggest hump will be to convince the wife that the tile in the bathrooms can be done by me. I'll go to those Home Depot clinics, for sure.

After that I'll carpet the main rooms, but maybe wait a few months to pull together the funds.

It's a shame about the carpet in the bedrooms. It's not really that old or worn. It just wasn't stretched right in the first place so there are waves in it.

Is there just services that can fix that or is that something that can be "repaired" by removing a baseboard, rent one of those knee-kick stretchers and redo the existing carpet.

It's pretty bad in the master. A wrinkle runs all of the way down the center of the room. :Q

 

[cxim]

the tile is straight forward, as a do it yourself job. deprnding on the room shape, you may not need a saw, just a $20 cutter

carpet ? the padding may be poor quality, & part of the problem. sometimes edges of the padding need to be glued down.

best deal is to go to Dalton Ga & buy direct wholesale. works ok if you have a trailer. you can get an idea of prices on the net, lots of web sites. This only practical if you do the whole house. You can have it drop shipped & still come out OK. You look at retail places & get the color, style /pattern you want & then buy in Ga.

Home Depot does not have best quality or selection for carpet.

to get out the wrinkles, ask around & hire a carpet guy, who does work on the side to restretch one room so you have a good idea how to go about it.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Hmm.... True. The wrinkle could be due to a crappy pad.

 

[yakko]

The wrinkle could also be where they are hiding stuff.

I say screw the carpet and go with all tile. Much nicer and a lot harder to stain.

 

I just dropped several thousand dollars in Home Depot on flooring. Going to get my new condo redone. They are putting in carpeting and flooring. I went with Pergo floors for the kitchen and bathrooms. It was a little expensive but the fact that they come and do it all for me was well worth it.

I almost fainted when we rang up almost 10k in Home Depot on Saturday between floors, kitchen and curtains.

I guess I am stuck with the 300a for another year

 

[chess9]

Do the tile yourself. It's a pain to remove the old tile, but installing the new tile is pretty easy. I've never installed my own carpet because I wouldn't want to cut it wrong or fail to pull it tight enough. Hardwood floors are pretty easy to install, though the labor is back-breaking. One of my friends, an engineer, did it in 3 weeks in the evenings. His house was a mess, but then he has 4 kids.

Good luck, and congrats on your home ownership.

 

[denali]

If you want the same color carpet in all the rooms I'd suggest that you do them at same time, or atleast purchase all of the carpet at the same time. If you don't you might end up with colors that will be off slightly even though you purchased the same color. I have had this happen before with fabric and thread they were I buy some one day the on another I'd purchase the exact same thing however the colors were not the same. I guess this is due to them not being manufactured in the same batch. Don't know if this could happen with carpet but I don't see why not.

 

[jonnyGURU]

BTW: The deal is closed!

The house is MINE!!!!!

Woohoo!!!!!!

 

[ATLien247]

I was going to advise you not to buy a house that you weren't completely satisfied with... but I can see that I'm a little too late.

Well, congratulations! This flooring thing can only be described as your introduction to the joys of being a home owner.

 

[rahvin]

Johnny email me if you would like a few tiling tips. In 90% of cases you will get a better tile job doing it yourself than paying someone to do it, even as an amatuer. I must say I didn't do that great of a job on my first bathroom, but the second bathroom rivals some of the best tile work I've seen.

As for the carpet, if you wanted to, before you move in you could go rent a carpet stretcher and try to get the bumps out yourself.

 

[jonnyGURU]

ATLien: On my budget (remember, I'm a computer tech and the wife's a teacher) you can't find the perfect house in Tampa.

I'll take not liking the floors over a lot of other potential problems.

Everything else I looked at would need a roof in 5 years! Believe me, floors aint nothing!

 

[Mday]

the tile should be removed. a plywood subfloor should be installed in areas that need carpetting. i just rather carpetted floors have a plywood subfloor. but it's not required...

anyway, the harder the floor, the thicker the layer of carpet padding should be.

with any job, you should look into contractors, and ask for quotes WRITTEN ON PAPER, as well as recommendations from friends and neighbors. contact the BBB.

i mean, if you don't know what you are doing...

it helps to have a friend who knows this stuff...

actually, i am pretty handy... i can watch a few episodes of this old house or hometime or whatnot ( on PBS, no cable here) and get the job done. my father has the tools too =)

 

[jonnyGURU]

oh... by the way.....

LAN PARTY!!!!!!

 

[lowtech1]

I don't know what the labor cost is like where you live, but here in BC. Canada the cheapest carpet/labor that you can get for 1500sq feet is around $2000.00 USD + tax. And, the under lining/labor is around $900.00USD + tax. (total cost is around $3000.00, but it can get as high as $15000 due to the carpet looks & quality)

Don't bother to install your own carpet, and the work is very heavy (a carpet roll is extreamly heavy). And, you won't save much because you have to include the triming/hold down for your carpet. (In Canada the labor cost for $1500sq feet is some where around $400.00~500.00USD for the entire job)