In the 70′s everybody in Sweden ripped out their carpeting. They also go rid of their tubs, also on the theory that they were unsanitary. It’s still very common for a house to have no tub, just a shower, and often that shower is not on the floor with the bedrooms. (It’s weird.) Until we renovated, the only place to bathe in our house was in the basement. True story.
For the most part I agree about carpeting, that it can get kind of grody. But it’s also really nice to have on stairs and where children are playing. A lot of stairways in Sweden are rickety-seeming, twisty, slippery, wooden, death traps. Our house, however, had a carpeted stairs and landing. Nice, except that it was the oldest, grossest, carpeting known to man, all black and green and disintegrating and smelling strongly of decades of dogs.
So it was one of the first things we had replaced. And at first the new carpet looked great. But then it started looking, well, bubbly. We got the people out to look at it, and they claimed we were mistaken to expect carpet to look flat “like a mirror.” Husband set them straight, and a few months later they replaced it, adding a new sub-floor.
Except they either did not order enough carpet the second time around, or some of it was damaged in delivery (we heard various stories), but at any rate there was not enough carpet for the bottom stair. They patched together seven pieces of remnants and expected us to be satisfied, but once again, Husband set them straight.
They avoided us for a while, but eventually were persuaded to install the carpet a third time. Disappointingly, the carpet we liked was no longer being manufactured (which is why they couldn’t have just ordered more carpet for that last step) so we had to pick something new out. It was boring and brown, but at this point we weren’t feeling picky. The top carpet-installer guy refused to come to our home a third time, so they sent some other guy. He sucked at carpet installing. The edges are somewhat uneven in places and it is driving me nuts. I bet I could have done a better job. But we don’t want to go through the torture of a fourth carpet job so we are just going to live with it, I suppose.
I guess carpet is installed so seldom in Sweden nobody really knows how to do it.
Husband did the rest of the work renovating the stairs (new dry wall, paint, railings, and painted trim) and it looks really nice.
9 January 2012 at 4:53 am
Carpets. Us Brits just love ‘em!
9 January 2012 at 7:23 pm
I would think that carpet in Sweden would be a must! Unless they’ve got in-floor heaters everywhere. Or they’re masochists. All I know is, my cold toes prefer the nice warm carpet to the cold hardwood floor.
If that’s what their top carpet installer does…well, maybe 2nd best won’t make much difference. Looks nice though – I love that little alcove!
10 January 2012 at 2:07 am
Some people do have heated floors–we have them in the bathroom and kitchen and might expand. But mostly it’s radiators and heat pumps I think.
They wear lots of fuzzy socks.
The stuff that went wrong the first two times wasn’t the fault of the installer, though. His edges were GREAT. I wish he had done it this time.
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10 January 2012 at 7:12 am
Haha, my first reaction was “what, how strange to actually _want_ carpeted stairs”. To me that’s a weird an unwanted rest from the 70ths. But then again, I’m swedish… :)
10 January 2012 at 7:16 am
Well, yeah, so they aren’t slippery! :)
It’s funny, you also had the opposite reaction to my opinion about lighting. You thought it was “unwelcoming” to have lots of lights on, and I feel the opposite. If I walk into a dark house, it’s like, what, you didn’t care enough I was coming to turn some lights on?
Must be a cultural thing. :)
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10 January 2012 at 7:43 am
Exactly, I like it dark and cozy with wooden floors (but I like candles). To me, bright light feels lika a grocery store, or as a club when they close and turn on the light to make people go home… But I too believe it’s a cultural thing, I understand that the whole wold doesn’t feel the same! :) I do think my opinion is very common here in Sweden.
10 January 2012 at 9:17 am
I like that we have hardwood in the main living areas but I would not mind carpet in the bedroom. Otherwise you are just buying giant rugs anyways to make the floor nice to stand on!
10 January 2012 at 11:02 am
Exactly! Because rugs can easily be taken out and cleaned and hanged outside in fresh air once in a while! (Unless they’re to big, I just want a small but cozy one to stand on when I get out of bed.
And just as written about Swedes above, I use fuzzy socks! :) I have plenty of them!
10 January 2012 at 10:50 pm
We have hardwood on the main floor, carpets upstairs (where the bedrooms are) and in the basement. I did not want our stairs carpeted because I had visions of fuzzy 70s carpeted stairs, although I have to say yours don’t look that way at all! They look very trim and nice.
11 January 2012 at 3:42 am
Hardwood stairs look nice, that’s true. About half the reason we carpeted ours is because it would have been cost-prohibitive to do hardwood. But the rest of the house is, or will be, hardwood, excepting bathrooms and kitchens. I certainly don’t want carpet downstairs (dogs). In our last home we took up most of the carpet and put down hardwoods.
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11 January 2012 at 3:23 am
I agree with Melissa, I didn’t mean that it looked bad in any way, didn’t mean it like that.
11 January 2012 at 6:59 am
I know you didn’t. :)
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11 January 2012 at 5:58 pm
Your new stairway looks lovely! I would feel more comfortable with carpeted stairs with a baby in the house also.