Carpet vs. Flooring
May 31, 2008 by Deborah Ng
Filed under Around the House
I’ve been thinking a lot about carpeting lately - or why I can’t stand it. When we moved into this house we ripped the ugly olive green carpet out of every room in the house. With the exception of the family room and kitchen, the rest of the house has hardwood floors which we hope to restore.
Since our family room has cement subflooring, we did put a carpet in that room. This was six years ago and I hate it. It’s more difficult to clean and six years later just looks dingy and dirty - even after renting a steamer. Plus carpets harbor all sorts of nasties - allergens and mites - that don’t make it all that attractive to me.
One thing really bothering me about carpeting is how it becomes landfill when your done with it. Plus it’s so hard to get rid of - when you have to pay for your trash removal its not cost effective to throw out bags of old carpet. It took us forever to get rid of all the carpeting we ripped up in here.
I love wood and wood laminate flooring the best. It looks nicest and is so easy to maintain. Ditto tile. Much easier to keep clean and much better for breathing. Personally, this thrifty chick feels uncarpeted floors are the cheaper, cleaner, healthier and more eco-friendly alternative.
What do you think?
Image:
LRN
We have carpet and I hate it, too. It catches everything and whatever is in the padding comes right back up after renting the cleaner.
I’m getting some samples from a company that makes dry carpet cleaner, it is supposed to get almost everything out and is safe. If my carpet still looks bad after that, it’s toast. I so want the laminate flooring.
Amen, sistah, preach it, mmmm-hmmm!
I hate, hate, hate carpet. When we moved into this house they had put new berber type carpet throughout. New. So I felt like I couldn’t rip it out. Now we are moving and we still have the (less new) carpet.
I don’t understand why anyone (read mother-in-law) would prefer carpet over hard wood.
For any person with allergies carpet is pure hell. Even with brand new carpeting and padding the outgas fumes wreaked havoc with with my health.
I also read somewhere a long time ago something about the consumption of socks going up when carpeting became the thing to have on all floors. Something about the friction of socked feet and the material of the carpets or something made socks wear out much faster.
If you are standing around much of your day on hardwood, it starts to hurt your feet, so I can understand why carpet is nicer for some people. It IS hard to take care of, but after having pure hardwood floors in my house for the past year, I actually miss carpet! Gasp!
We have changed from carpet to laminate in many of our rooms and I really like it.
This year, I have had to deal with kid vomit, dog vomit, cat pee and dog pee. Nevermind the allergies. I just bought a house with all hardwood floors. Yea!!!
Hate carpet, too. That was my main point of disappointment with selling the house and moving into our apt was giving up the hardwoods for carpet. It’s GROSS.
Fortunately our apartments are very lenient with whatever you want to do to your apartment space, painting, ripping out carpet and putting laminate, ceiling fans, whatever, as long as it’s not destroying property. You don’t even have to repaint or anything when you move, and usually they’ll just leave it, unless it’s a crap paint job or something.
since I am pregnant and we’re going to have to move into a 3br in about 6 months we decided to wait and keep the carpet for now, but when we move into a different apartment here I plan to slowly replace the carpet with laminate flooring.
Carpet is so gross!
I think that hard surface flooring gives my family room a more spacious feeling… and yes… the clean up is much easier!