Perhaps you need new floor covering and are looking for cheap carpet. Purchasing cheap carpet is not always a wise investment for usually you get what you are paying for and in short order the carpet looks terribly worn. Now if you are willing to be creative here is a way you can carpet a room on the cheap and not with cheap carpet but with quality carpet!
Cheap Carpet is not the same as Carpeting on the Cheap
Carpet a room using carpet samples and you do not need to use cheap carpet. This creative method of carpeting a room works out great for a casual family room or kids bedroom. One of the real benefits besides costs is that when an area looks worn it is easily replaced without replacing the carpet in the entire room.
Cheap carpet samples as inexpensive as .50 cents each can be purchased at retail carpet dealers that want to get rid of their discontinued samples. Larger sample of carpet may cost a bit more than smaller ones but will cover a larger area. The size of both the sample and the room you are carpeting will dictate how many samples you’ll need. If samples are not available you can also purchase small remnants of carpet. You’ll also need to purchase staples or floor adhesive to attach the samples to the floor.
If you are doing a children’s playroom cheap carpet may not hold up though doing carpeting on the cheap by using multi-colored carpet is perfect. It is very colorful and if a spill stains one of the squares of carpet, you can quickly and easily pull it back up and install a new square. This is a great advantage to doing a playroom this way.
The only things you’ll actually need when you install your carpet samples or squares in a room is a carpet knife and a staple gun. The 5/8″ staples seem to work the best for squares and samples.
All you need to do is put the carpet piece in place and staple in two or three staples along each side. Make sure you wiggle the head of the stapler down deep between the fibers, or between the border and the fibers, so you can hide the staples as much as possible.
If you are carpeting a concrete floor, you can use either all purpose adhesive or double sided carpet tape instead of staples. With either case, this is best to do when padding isn’t that important. You can use padding as well if you don’t mind the complications, although without it, its pure simplicity.
You may also choose to lay out your pieces of carpet first, then decide where each individual piece will go. When you reach walls, heating sources, or other obstacles, you can quickly and easily cut the pieces to fit. If you happen to make a mistake, it will cost you almost nothing, instead of costing you a fortune. When you make a mistake, all you have to do is start over with a different sample.
Before you begin to put the carpet down, you should always measure the size of the room first so that you can determine how many samples you need to purchase. If one store does not have enough samples you can usually find more samples at another store. To save drive time you might want to call around and find out what stores have ahead of time.
Although the samples will range in size the average is about 18 X 18 inches. Using pieces that are the same size is perhaps the easiest way to do it. Using multiple sizes is more work but if you have an artistic flare you will find it worth your time cutting and fitting multiple sizes of carpet samples.
Keep in mind that using samples or remnants is a very unusual style and if you are preparing a house for sale this is probably not the best choice for most rooms.