Wall-to-Wall carpeting was a response to the TV generation – those kids who sat and played on the floor in front of the TV.
If you don’t have 4 kids, if you don’t have only one living room, if you don’t have just one 17’’ TV, if your kids watch youtube on the iPad instead… Then carpeting is on the way out. It was part of a social phenomenon that is now gone.
Sorry, gotta disagree with that. Wall to wall was a brilliant solution to hardwood floors that required paste wax applied on hands and knees, polished with an electric polisher. That’s a lot of freaking work! There were no, mop and glow, easy to apply options available, at the time.
So, yeah, wall to wall broadloom, that just needs vacuuming once a week, is a brilliant upgrade for the housekeeper! Until people figure out that it looks better after a clean up, but isn’t actually clean at all. And is never gonna be. Ever.
We have much better finishes today, that last way longer, require way less care. And the air quality inside the house is so much improved with the removal of the carpeting, it’s kind of a no brainer.
(If vacuuming and steam cleaning did the job, the Dr wouldn’t be demanding the removal of all carpets so little Tommy/Gran can breathe okay!)
Out, imho.
I just installed this stuff about 3 months ago. Love it.
I have always had cats. Back when I bought my first home (a single wide trailer with avocado green carpets), one of the first things I did was rip the carpet out of the kitchen and lay tile. What I found when ripping the very clean and serviceable looking carpet was so disgusting that I ripped the rest of the carpet out and walked on bare plywood until I could afford to buy tile or laminate to cover the rest of the floors.
Large thick area rugs work just as well as carpeting to make the room look and feel warm, but when they are picked up and cleaned, both sides get cleaned and the floors get cleaned.
Yes, a thousand times yes.
Sorry to resurrect this zombie; in the midst of faux laminate flooring in my own place and read through this whole thread, only to be stunned by this:
There were definitely peculiar carpet trends in decades ago including carpeted bathrooms, but in a kitchen? Wow.
No surprise a disaster was found underneath it after tearing it up, which goes a long way towards explaining why no sane person would put it in a kitchen to begin with. To say nothing of the fact it’s an enormous fire hazard.
Rugs in general are a sound dampener. Wall-to-Wall carpeting is economical, with padding underneath further dampens sounds, so if you have kids you may want it just for that purpose, especially in a house with more than one story.
I was happy several years ago when they renovated the trains here and replaced the fetid carpeted floors with laminate that’s considerably more resistant to hobo urine.
I’m a barefoot in the house kind of person, so I prefer carpet. I like hardwood in the kitchen, near doorways, etc. And I would never put carpet in the bathroom. But I like carpet. Especially since rugs always seem to be slipping around and moving around. I mean, why put hardwood down if you’re just going to cover it up with a rug? Why not just put carpet down?
That’s my $.02, anyway.
I have plantar fasciitis and if I didn’t have carpet in most of the house, I’d never be able to go barefoot in my own home.
For years we also had large dogs that didn’t do well on hard surfaces either, so I had to put down area rugs on the vinyl in the kitchen and the hardwood in the hall to keep them from slipping. That was a lot of rugs and it was a pain in the ass to pick up, wash, dry and replace those rugs every time the kitchen floor needed cleaning. It shouldn’t take half a day to do a single room’s floor.
That said, there was carpet in the bathrooms when we bought our house, which is insane. We finally had it replaced last year with thick top-quality vinyl and it looks good and isn’t slippery. I can hardly wait for the day when we replace the cheap, slippery, hard vinyl in the kitchen.
Real estate broker here.
Everyone likes good hardwood floors, but most people who prefer hardwood are still cool with carpets in bedrooms. I feel that way as well. I have hardwoods throughout, but area rugs in the bedrooms. Rug or carpet is simply more comfortable in bedrooms. I’ve had people who disliked the carpeting in bedrooms of houses because of its color, style, or being in poor condition, but I’ve never seen anyone object to good-quality carpet in bedrooms of a house with hardwood floors - even if the hardwood under the carpet is in good condition.
People generally like to have a contrast of wood and carpet/rugs in the house. What people tend to dislike is wall to wall carpeting. The kind of carpeting that covers every inch of every surface of the house (except for the kitchen and bathrooms…but sometimes even them too…UGH!) Nobody ever likes that.
Homes built before the 1950s tend to have hardwood floors. Depending on the preferences of the owner, they may have carpet over the hardwood. If the homes are single-owner or have been inhabited by only a handful of owners over the decades, the hardwood is often in excellent condition underneath the carpets.
Homes built after the 1950s often do not have any hardwood. Frequently I’ll have clients who eagerly pull up the register (air vent) in a house, hoping to peek under the carpet and find hardwood, only to be disappointed when there is nothing there but subfloor. Often 60s and 70s ranch or split-level homes have a combination of hardwood and carpet, but in the areas with carpet (usually the bedrooms, sometimes a den or rec room) there will be no hardwood under there. In these instances people typically replace the old, dated carpet with newer carpet or with hardwood or laminate.
Contemporary homes typically have medium to wide-plank hardwoods, arranged in a staggered pattern like brick masonry. Earlier homes from the 40s or 50s often have “slat” flooring: long, narrow planks, all arranged vertically and parallel to each other, and nailed down in the same spot. This type of hardwood doesn’t seem to be installed any longer, since I’ve never seen it in a newer-construction home.
Gaining popularity in recent years is a type of flooring that is made to look like faded wood, but is actually a ceramic-like tyle. It can look cool in houses with gray/white modernist looks, but doesn’t fit well with “earth tone” palettes at all.
I also occasionally see hardwood floors that have been painted over, usually in a dark brown or black color. I don’t like how that looks, but a lot of people don’t seem to mind it at all. It’s typically found in quick-and-dirty flipper houses, usually early-1900s or late-1800s houses that were renovated on a tight budget.