So this is not Gandy but a while ago I mentioned on Instagram that we have carpet for our house. Some people showed interest when they heard about this, so I’m here to oblige! The initiator was that we didn’t want to damage the beautiful hardwoods below with a pile of nails, so we chose carpet.
However, I want the wall carpet for our bedroom and nursery – I’m a carpet person, what can I say?! Plus, to be honest, I really don’t care for most area rugs and they’re often overpriced in my opinion, as the quality isn’t so great. I wanted a mat that really had the will to live seriously between a big dog and a baby. This was really hard to find among regular area rugs (with super specific sizes, etc.), so we decided to try the “custom rug” route.
The problem arises from that The choice, of course, is cost.
Or To be is it a problem…?
That’s when Tom started hunting around.
We wanted custom rugs for our two bedrooms and almost the walls in our living room, along with cushions. What makes them “custom area rugs” are the finished edges and specified dimensions.
We live in Tennessee, but between Nashville and Atlanta are major carpet manufacturers, such as Mohawk and Shaw. These sources feed to stores like Home Depot or even businesses that only sell carpets in your local area. We used to pass by their huge warehouses on our way up north, so when Tom remembered they were there he looked for some companies near them that could work with us, and landed at Myers Carpet of Dalton. Honestly, Tom really should have written this post, because he did all the correspondence and ordering, but I’ll do my best – haha!
He contacted them and had a few chats with the sales rep about what we were looking for in terms of needs (durable, pet-friendly, easy to care for), materials (we wanted Nylon for the reasons mentioned a second ago), color (neutral speckled grey), and pile/weight (our last house had such cheap rug, and what do we want? that’s more luxurious and that thing won’t break as quickly). Most, if not all, of the companies in that area have terrible websites with no pricing, poor ability to filter options, and what looks like a limited selection. I’m sure if you know your carpet lingo and have memorized the brands it’ll be easy for you to skim them, but for carpet novices, they’re a bit… crazy.
However, it turns out that they are because these stores really have no real limits on inventory or options. The person Tom talked to told him that if we could find a carpet type/color/weight/company, it would be 9 times made right up the street from their office. They don’t have online prices, as they primarily sell to the carpet shops you have in town and must keep that information private for the sake of competition. When we first heard their quotes for the same materials we’d reviewed at Home Depot and other stores, we thought it was a mistake. Basically, places in Dalton Georgia don’t compete with Home Depot, they sell to Home Depot, who then put their own profits first. The price we paid from them was almost half of what we expected to find elsewhere because we could cut out the middle man.
Once we figured that out, they sent us some small samples to peruse based on some pictures the sales rep texted us – for free.
It took us 24 hours to review each model in all the rooms we wanted them to be in and in different lighting, and easily made our choice.
Then we measure the exact dimensions of each room about four times to get a positive value, and send our dimensions to our contact with the model name we like and the margin we want them to be. stay. We wanted a snug fit so we only asked for a 1/2″ margin from the wall to the edge of the rug. With all of that in place, we placed an order.
After a few days, Tom got a phone call from the sales rep and found out that they would come out of the pile and the exact weight of the rug we had chosen. To avoid waiting, we chose to use even higher pile material, because we like, yes, but also because it will only add about $0.15 a square foot. Gotta gives those toes some luxuries.
Was it the most effortful process? No. Do we fully believe that everything will go 100% as we expect? No. Phone/text/email back and forth was a bit complicated and lengthy, but our rep, Madison, did a great job keeping us informed of the location of the production, even calling Tom chatted a few times with the people who actually cut our carpets to make sure everything was correct.
Shipping also took a bit of a wait, but because they make carpets for a variety of businesses, we had to wait until the delivery truck in Nashville was full until our carpets could be sent out. . This made shipping much cheaper, so it cost us nothing.
When it was sent to a carpet store in Nashville, that place called us and scheduled a delivery time. Tom talked to the rep at that store, and it turned out that our white glove delivery price was half the price we communicated with them. In the end, it cost a little more than what we were quoted by the manufacturer, but it was still much less than what we paid.
And you guys…
Wonderful. Literally the thickest rug we’ve ever had. So dense that Tom had to vacuum for me because our vacuum couldn’t get through. Not because it’s tall, but because it’s… so… dense. I never realized I was involuntarily cringing every night as I rolled out of bed to the bathroom in the night and touched the cold hardwood. The first night we rolled out the carpet, I actually smiled in the dark because I felt so quiet and cozy! Anyway, yes, everyone under this roof is very excited about it…even Hondo, who is happy not to slip from room to room. But I’d be happy to expand on it further in a message if you want more details on anything!
Summary:
We ordered (almost) three room rugs, custom size, high quality/high nylon, with finished edges, quick turnaround, delivery and gloved installation. white (meaning they moved all of our furniture and placed it), padding, and no sales tax (since it’s out of state) all for….
$1,730
Now you might think this sounds steep, but be aware that the particular rug we picked will cost up to $8.50 per square foot more than anywhere else. It’s just a rug. We get EVERYTHING listed above for about $5.50 per square foot.
Oh and if you saw this awesome barn door hardware on my Instagram last week, we pulled it from Wikibuy, a website and Chrome extension that helps find you the best prices online! This was gifted to me, but I love using their site. We died to get a sliding door in, because our owner is small and we wanted to eliminate the area that a revolving door takes up. We are happy to have it!
