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Looking For Cheap Carpeting Article
Looking for Cheap Carpeting?
from: Maxx Home GuidesWhen choosing carpet for your home, you may be intereesting in carpets you can install yourself. There are certainly ways to carpet a room quite cheaply. Carpeting a home or apartment can get very expensive, so finding ways to save money is very important to families on a tight budget.
A neat trick for carpeting a room very cheaply is to use carpet samples which are actually considered new carpets, since samples aren't considered used.
You can purchase samples of carpet for about .25 cents a piece at closeout sales or at your local hardware or carpet store. Depending on the size of the room you need to carpet, the number of samples you'll need will vary. You'll also need a good supply of staples as well. You can usually expect to pay about a dollar or so for each square of carpet, which is certainly cheap carpeting.
Just remember that using samples or squares is an unusual style, that could have affect the resale value of your home. In a trailer or mobile home, this style is a cheap to get started. In a more expensive or mid priced home, you can use cheap carpeting in the basement, playroom, or in a child's playhouse.
For a children's playroom, using multi-colored carpet can actually be a perfect solution. It's very colorful and if there's a spill that stains one of the squares, it's easy to pull it up and install a new one.
Installing your cheap carpet: All you'll need to install carpet samples or squares in a room is a carpet knife and a staple gun. 5/8" staples the best job for squares and samples.
Simply put the carpet peice 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, in order to hide the staples as much as you can.
If you're carpeting a basement floor, you might want to use carpet tape rather than staples. In either case, this is best in areas where padding isn't important. You can certainly use padding if you choose to, as long as you don't mind the complications. Without padding, the job is simplicity itself.
Another plan is to lay out your pieces of carpet first, then decide where each piece will go. When you reach walls, heating sources and other obstacles, it's easy to quickly cut the pieces to fit properly. If you make a mistake, it'll cost about a dollar, rather than costing you a fortune. Mistakes only require you to start over with a new piece of carpet.
The first thing you should do before laying down your carpet is to estimate how many pieces you'll need, and then start shopping around to find a store with enough samples to do the job.
Carpet samples range in size at different stores, but average 18 X 18 inches. If you use the same size pieces, you'll discover the job of laying down the carpet will be much easier. Though you may pay about a dollar a piece, this rounds out to less than .50 cents per square foot to carpet your room -- which is really cheap carpeting indeed!