Carpet Fitting

I see a lot of shops who sell carpets offering a free fitting service. Certainly all of the carpets in my house were done this way. Its not an easy task unless you have no furniture and the room does not have bay windows pipes and other problem areas. Brian

In my experience the shops that offer free fitting want a completely clear room.

My experience with fitting carpets myself is that it is a PITA.

The last carpet that was laid earlier this year took two fitters just over 10 minutes (12 square metres) but the underlay and grippers were already in place. I already had a roll of cloud 9 underlay and I fitted that myself - stapled to the wooden floor and joins taped.

FWIW we had carpet and underlay fitted to a child's bedroom just recently. Done by a somewhat old-fashioned local firm. We actually bought the carpet nearly two years ago; it had been sitting in their warehouse throughout the pandemic...

We cleared out all the bedroom except for the child's cabin bed. One reason we chose this firm is they they seemed happy to fit with that still present.

The room is small (5m x 2.5); three fitters turned up but that was probably because of the cabin bed. Removing old carpet and underlay and refitting new (no gripper replacement) took about 30mins.

I can no longer remember the cost breakdown (if we were ever given one) but IIRC it was 'fitting included' - a bit more honest than 'free fitting'. if I do a few sums of the estimated cost of the carpet and underlay, and compare to what we actually, paid, I'd say the fitting was equivalent to perhaps fifty quid? Carpet fitting is certainly one of the jobs I am happy to pay for.

HTH, J^n