To carpet or not to carpet?

[Lizzie]

Hello everyone,

I hope you are having a great week.

There are usually many different reasons why we have particular flooring in our homes; design, cost, weather, preference, being just some examples. When it comes to flooring there is certainly a lot to choose from. 

Whenever I have spoken to friends/family about their homes, i've always been quite surprised about how passionate they get over whether to have carpet or not. So with this in mind, I thought I would see what your feelings are on this. 🙂

Are you a fan of carpet in your home or not? Perhaps you have gone for something different for your guests, if your listing is seperate. Why have you chosen your flooring? 

(@Marzena, recently shared about some very clever flooring she has in her listing.)

Personally, I like a mixture! I am a fan of carpet in the bedroom, I like to get out of bed and sink my toes into soft carpet. I also like floor tiles in the kitchen, this way if I spill anything whilst cooking up a masterpiece (ok, just food), then it is quick and easy to tidy up.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks,

Lizzie

[Susan10]

Well, still not true.  Wood floors can only be sanded, re-stained and sealed - at most twice, because the wood gets too thin.  It is a major deal to do this.  We did this once, when we bought a new refrigerator and the delivery workers scratched our floor moving the old one out.  All furniture has to be moved out of the house for two to three days.  You can't sleep or be in the room for 24 hours after the stain and seal because the air is not condusive for breathing!  Major chemicals in the air.  You can't walk on the floor - you have to wear those goofy slippers over shoes or feet for a time.  In contrast when we replaced our carpet upstairs, total time to move furniture out, pull up carpet, put carpet down, move furniture back into place (can walk on caprpet immediately) - all this only took 1 day.

[Sarah977]

@Susan10  There are options for sealers that are ecologically friendly that do not have nasty chemical fumes.

[Kimberly54]

@Susan10, you are completely correct about the effort it takes to refinish a wood floor--but the 'oldness' of a place can be so GREAT!  Play that up, right? 

And I think you are still totally overlooking the value of the possibility of century old dead people that might have been hidden in closets/attics/basements?? 

Kidding... sort of... ;-)))

[Lizzie]

Your floors look great @Huma0 and @Sarah977. It must be a real treat to uncover such lovely treat underneath something rather vile, even if it involves a bit of work to get them back to their finer self! Much better than if you had to buy something to get what you want. 

Your staircase, certainly looks like an interesting project, Huma. Do you think you will remove all the paint, even on the banister? 

Sarah, is all of the flooring the lovely cedar?

[Sarah977]

@Lizzie  Only the stairs treads were yellow cedar, the rest of the floors were fir tongue-in-groove and some maple. That was my house in Canada, which I sold a few years ago. I have all saltillo tile and polished concrete in my home in Mexico.

When I was sprucing up the Canadian house to put it on the market, the wood floors had already been sanded down so many times over the years that the wood was too thin to sand down again. I'd had long-term renters in there for several years, so the floors were really worn and dirty-looking in the high traffic areas. A friend and I spent a day scrubbing them down with steel wool and soap (oh, my aching back). Then I slapped a couple coats of quick-drying water-based sealer on them. They looked way better than I'd expected- everyone thought I'd just freshly sanded them down again.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977

Steel wool and soap? That sounds like a crazy amount of work. I am not sure I have your stamina but I do admire it!

[Huma0]

@Lizzie

If I do it myself, I don't think I'll be able to get all the paint off the stairs. It's several coats and some of it very old. I tried on a few steps, but only managed to get one layer off, which made them look worse, because then they were even patchier and you could see the older, more stained paint underneath!

I think @Sarah977 is right. Probably it's best to just try to get them smooth enough to paint again. 

I won't remove the paint on the bannisters. The builders did actually repaint them and they look fine. They would be a nightmare to strip as there are so many and they are very detailed. That's definitely a pro job I think!

It was nice to restore the floorboards in the rest of the house but it wasn't straightforward. They had been painted in some weird black stuff that would not shift with sanding. I have no idea what it was. The builders had to flip every single board and sand and varnish the other side.

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  The floors may at some point before your time have had lino glued down- that weird black stuff would have been the glue, which is why it wouldn't sand off like paint. I had some in my old house as well.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977

You are now my 'go to' for any flooring questions. Even the builders had no idea what that stuff was, but that's a very logical explanation. There was lino in the kitchen/diner and the large bathroom when I bought the house. Why anyone would put it in the bedrooms is beyond me, but each to their own...

[Sarah977]

@Huma0  Haha @Huma0 , I'm no flooring expert, I just happened to have an old house like yours 🙂 My place did have old rolled lino (as opposed to lino tiles) in the bedrooms. It actually was kinda interesting patterns, almost like an oriental rug- if it hadn't been so worn and faded and ripped in places, I might have left it and just used scatter rugs. It would now be considered "retro" and therefore cool.

[Huma0]

@Sarah977

Yes, some lino can be quite cool. I remember it had a bit of a 'moment' a few years back when it was being touted as fashionable in interiors magazines. I still wouldn't put it in a bedroom.

The stuff in my house was definitely not cool. The lino in the kitchen/diner was a faux laminate effect, really cheap and nasty looking. The stuff in the bathroom... well I don't know what that was supposed to look like. Some kind of stone or wood I guess, but it was just very dark and grim looking.

[Tracy0]

Some of my flooring is just not my preference.  I have a long lease on a flat which has requirements for flooring, so I work within that. 

[Huma0]

@Tracy0

I used to have a flat that had a rule in the lease that you couldn't have bare wooden floors. I have to admit I ignored it and pulled out the carpets as soon as I got the keys!

Then again, that was a lease in the sense that I was the leaseholder/owner of the flat, rather than a rental lease. For a rental, I would abide by the rules.

[Sarah977]

[Sarah977]

Couldn't manage to add text to above photo. This is a tiling project I got really creative on in my Mexican home. I was actually out of full tiles and couldn't get more of the same type, so spent 8 hours one day with my tile saw cutting all the scraps into these pieces and took me 4 days to do this section, which is about 2 meters square.