Carpet Shopping, Part II

There are three places I'm currently looking at for carpet:
Summers Interiors, located near 400 E and State Street in American Fork.  They're a little business run out of an old house, like a lot of businesses here in Utah.  I think it's so cool!
Blackhurst Carpets, a warehouse located on State Street on the corner where you turn to get to the hospital/temple.
Carpet One in Orem.  Also, coincidentally, located on State Street.  It must be the place to be!  I haven't actually been into the store today.  A guy came in this morning to measure and give us an estimate.

I guess the first thing you need when figuring out how much it will cost to get new carpets is an estimate.  Here are the estimates I have so far:
118.7 square yards, 111.4 square yards, 116.2 square yards.  We'll see what the Carpet One guy estimates.  They always overestimate a little bit to make sure they'll have enough carpet ... so does this mean I should order 111.4 yards of carpet?  I dunno!!

Home Depot is the trickiest about the pricing of the carpet.  They give you the square yard price of the carpet, plus the square yard price of the pad, plus the "installation fee" for the basic house carpet installation, plus the cost of carpeting the stairs.  All of the other places have a per-yard installation-plus-pad cost, then give you an additional estimate for the stairs.  ANYWHO.

Home Depot gave me a total estimate of about $2600 with an 8-pound carpet pad, or $2400 with a 6-pound carpet pad.  They'll move the furniture for me.

None of the other places will move my furniture, but are very willing to work with me.  I can move all of the stuff out of the kids' bedrooms into the master bedroom and they'll carpet the stairs, upstairs hallway, and the two bedrooms.  After they do that, I can move the furniture out of the master bedroom and move all of the downstairs furniture into the kitchen/whatever (oh man how am I going to move my piano?! but Home Depot won't move my piano, either.) and then they can do the master bedroom and the downstairs.  It sounds like a good deal to me!

The estimates for doing my stairs are about $150 for both Summers and Home Depot, and $56 for Blackhurst.  (4 bucks a stair?  SOLD!)

There's a carpet we like that we found at Summers and at Blackhurst.  We're not huge fans of the cheapest carpet at Home Depot, which is *still* more expensive per yard than the carpets we're looking at from those other places.  Plus, the Internet says "Shaw" is a pretty good carpet brand.  And the sample binder thingies have a diagram on the back saying, "This rates a 3 on its durability, 1 being for lightest traffic and 5 being heavy-duty for the highest traffic."  I think 3 sounds good.  3.5 would be better, but I was looking at the 3.5's and don't see anything I really like.

Anyway.  Here's what I found:
Summers and Blackhurst sell the same carpet.  Summers will install it for $15.99/yd and Blackhurst will install it for $18/yd.  Blackhurst will use a 6 pound pad, Summers will use an 8 pound pad.  Even with Summers giving me a higher estimate to do my stairs, Summers wins hands down.  They gave me a grand total estimate of $2000 - $2200 if I want them to tear out my carpet for me, too.  But tearing out carpet is easy.  And my neighbor owns a landscaping company (the one that does our neighborhood's landscaping) and says I can borrow his truck to haul our old carpet to the dump.

So ... it looks like I'm going to get 115ish yards of carpet installed in my house for $2000 from Summers Interiors.  That's a much better deal than working with Home Depot for $2600 and getting annoyed by all of their paperwork.  (Seriously!  Look at it and it's intimidating!)

Home Depot = good for cheap paint.  Only go to KWAL or Sherwin-Williams if you really need nice paint, which you probably don't.  Home Depot is a good place for tools and supplies and garden stuff and lumber and whatnot.  But I think if you want to get new carpet or remodel your kitchen, you're better off going to an independent company that specializes in cabinets or carpet or whatever.  Never EVER EVER EVER hand someone money for an estimate.  And if you don't feel comfortable, do your business elsewhere.


I had this deal with Mark where I get to keep whatever money we save from the $2600 estimate.  Bwahaha.  Too bad I'm a dork and it will be going into a savings account towards the minivan I want to buy in 5 years ... (probably a Honda Odyssey or a Toyota Sienna.  Yum.)  Used, of course.  But it has to have those screens built into the seats so my kids can watch Disney movies on our 14-hour trips to the Pacific Northwest.  I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED ONE OF THOSE.  And, no, I'm not going to let my kids watch TV while we're driving around town - the screens are for road trips only!  And we are only going to watch Disney so I can sing along obnoxiously at the top of my lungs!  I WILL BE THE CRAZIEST MOST AWESOME AND EMBARRASSING MOM EVER!

Yeah, I'm totally a minivan kinda gal.  So sue me!

Oh, my good ol' Mercury Villager, RIP.  I love you.  To be 16 again ... and 20 pounds lighter ... (I'm lazily working on it!)

How did I get from carpets to minivans?  Oh ... saving money ...

Carpet Shopping, Part I

The exciting (and lame) thing about being an adult is that you have to do everything for yourself.  I always thought adults seemed like they knew everything.  They never have problems, right?  The whole point of growing up is to know how to do stuff, right?  Sure, my parents made mistakes, but that's more the exception than the rule.  Or something. ;)

I want new carpet.  I bet our current carpet is probably original to the house (built in 1999) and we've kind of finished trashing the carpet.  When we moved in, the carpet was not quite dry yet and we wore our shoes while moving in the furniture.  It was too late by the time I thought to protect the carpet with cardboard.  D'oh!

Anywho.  New carpet.  Where to begin?  My mom just got new carpet from Home Depot.  Quick, easy, whatever.  She recommended them, and since she's my mom, she's got to be right, right?  (What the heck is "right" with buying carpet anyway??)  And then I thought, "There are carpet stores.  I should go there too.  Maybe."  I tried reading stuff on the Internet about buying carpet and it just made my head hurt.  I like doing things on my own, sometimes I have a hard time with salespeople (okay, used car salesmen, BUT STILL), and ... I don't know!  It's just scary when you feel like you don't know anything!!

So the first mistake I made was going to Home Depot first.  You have no idea how much it costs to install carpet.  You have no idea what labor charges there are.  You don't know what's covered in this price and that ... how do you ask for just a final cost estimate so you have something to compare?!  Home Depot won't give you an estimate until you have someone come in and measure, and they charge you $50.  Supposedly it's a really good measuring (the guy had this little computer and did a lot of measuring and thinking and he was really nice) ... and now I have my estimates from them.

I went into two carpet places today, and one thing I thought was really nice was the price they gave me per yard included the carpet, the pad, and the installation.  Home Depot lists all those things separately.  They've offered to come to my house this week to do some measuring and give me some of their estimates - for free.

Okay, so right now I'm out 50 bucks because I had Home Depot come and do a measure.  But if they end up being the people we decide to go with for the install, they'll "refund" our $50 and apply it towards the installation of the carpet and stuff.

But, you know, "big box stores are the devil" and all, so we'll see what these more local companies have to offer.  I must say, I felt way more comfortable in their showrooms talking to the people about trying to get cost estimates and ideas than I did at Home Depot.  I might've felt awkward no matter where I went first, or I could trash Home Depot and be like, "These carpet stores were like, 'Yes, let us help you.' and Home Depot was like, 'We'll help you ... but give us some money first!'"  It's like they're trying to trap me into buying from them and only them!

Ever heard of sunk costs?  Some people start putting money into a failing project, but they keep throwing money at it because they've been throwing money at it and think that if they dump the bad project they've thrown their money away.  But it's already been thrown away!  Cut your losses and move on!


So ... carpet shopping lesson #1 ....... don't pay for an estimate. ;)
(oh, just wait until I have my car buying lessons! yikes!)