Hello fellow OzBers,
My partner and I will be moving into our first home we purchased together next month and have decided to do some renos on the flooring and paint the walls prior to furnishing. The property is about 20 years old, still in good condition and is half carpet half laminate.
Carpeted areas include the stairs themselves, entire upstairs (4 BR) and study and lounge area downstairs whilst the entrance/hallway and kitchen/dining all have floating laminate over tiles which previous owner installed.
My preference (which I assume was her also) was the standard upstairs/bedrooms and low traffic areas carpet to reduce noise and warm carpet in toes comfortable feeling etc and non-carpet areas in the usual high traffic foot areas and water prone areas.
I have made the mistake of assuming and have come to realise the missus hates carpet with a passion. Her main argument is mainly focused on hygiene benefits i.e. dust and debris will get stuck in carpet and ease of cleaning. She mentioned that her family has lived in rentals previously with some real bad carpet with mould rough stains etc… where as I have always lived in a house with half floorboard/bedroom carpet where we professionally steam cleaned the carpet after moving in and generally kept it in good condition.
While I do like the look of the man-made hard flooring options these days, carpet is generally cheaper. I would rather spend money on a nicer TV and soundbar set up when the right EOFY deal comes along or allocating to furniture.
Some other factors: This is both our first house and we intend to live in it for a while, we do not own much pre-existing furniture and we do not expect any kids in 5+ years.
My initial compromise was to change the study/lounge area downstairs from carpet to some form of hard flooring (something that won’t completely drain my bank account like engineered timber, laminate or vinyl…) and re carpet the whole upstairs. However, after extensively researching pros and cons of each and going back and form we are still not in complete agreeance.
Has anyone been through this scenario, particularly having hard flooring upstairs? Or should I just bite the bullet and follow the happy wife = happy life way of living.
Thanks for reading and looking forward to any insight :)
Hard floors all the way.
So much easier to clean.
We have been lucky to keep our old carpet whilst the kids were young (falling on their backsides, heads etc), carpet probably saved a few trips to the doctor.
But other than that carpet is on its way out as soon as possible.