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When did we all have fitted carpets.?

A

Alberta

Super Moderator
Staff member
My childhood in the 40,early 50s was in a house with lino on all floors and a hearthrug in front of the fire, I can't remember when we got fitted carpets. Crikey that lino was cold when you stepped out of bed:(
 
In the 60s we had a large carpet square in the middle of the living room. It was surrounded by a posh type of lino.
Late 60s or early 70s before hall and stairs were fitted.
 
Until mid 60's we had the usual brown square. Our fitted carpet was grey and black flecked and it was so thin it didn't last long. In the other room in later years we had foam backed and the dog clawed it up in one corner, it was horrible. Nan's house always had a rubbery smell from rubber-backed carpet. Our stair "carpet" was very narrow and was like woven string (sisal?), there was never any fitted carpet on the stairs or landing.
 
Stair carpets were usually 27" wide and secured by stair rods; the more expensive fitted carpets, not common until after WW2, was fitted with carpet gripper and fitted throughout.
 
We had fitted carpets in the late fifties but it was cheapo stuff,

When we moved down here it was left behind and we had oak floorboards for a while

I bought quite a nice carpet square for £25 off a gipsy guy who used to tout them around and had it for something like 15 years in the main bedroom, it still looked good when I carpeted my current house so I stuck it on Ebay with photos and a £1 start price..it fetched £200 and the buyer was thrilled with it. :)
 
My uncle was a carpet fitter,Ted Willis, so our first fitted carpet would be about 1965,just after our move from Hockley to Acocks Green.

Nodd KD
 
pjmburns said:
In the 60s we had a large carpet square in the middle of the living room. It was surrounded by a posh type of lino.
Late 60s or early 70s before hall and stairs were fitted.
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We had a carpet square in the front room too Janice. It was surrounded by Lino with some kind of border. Courtesy of the previous tennant. The rest of the house was Lino with a varied arrangement of mats to trip over. Sometimes they were offcuts that we would tape round the edges to stop them fraying.
 
It was a carpet square and lino around the edges at my mom’s house. I first had a fitted carpet in 1979, in my first house. The carpet was the only thing in the house that was new.

It was foam backed and rubbish, lasted about 3 years before it started falling apart
 
Morturn said:
It was a carpet square and lino around the edges at my mom’s house. I first had a fitted carpet in 1979, in my first house. The carpet was the only thing in the house that was new.

It was foam backed and rubbish, lasted about 3 years before it started falling apart
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we had one fitted it was foam backed. when we got up in the morning. ..Shock Horror! it had shrunk and ripped out of the grips, due to under floor heating
 
not sure what if any the difference was between lino and oil cloth but we always called it oil cloth on the floors with a medium rug in the middle...our bedrooms never had a rug just oil cloth until 72 when we moved from villa st then we had fitted carpets

lyn
 
We had an unusual carpet arrangement in our 1930s house. There was a parquet border of about 8” deep next to the skirting boards which ran around the downstairs rooms. Within that surround was fitted a piece of carpet (or I expect originally Lino). This was also the arrangement in the hallway.

Our Yorkshire relations worked in carpet mills, and they’d often ‘throw a piece on the van’ if it was coming Birmingham way. So we were fortunate to have had good quality carpet as far back as I remember (1950s).

However, Mum didn’t go as far as carpeting the bathroom - she thought it unhygienic. We had those black chequer board Lino tiles.

Viv.
 
Lino tended to be tougher and was designed for floors. Oil cloth was material on one side and could be used as wipe-down table cloths.
 
Originally a brand name, but, like Hoover, became generalised.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linoleum) . As I remember it in the 1950s where I was , linoleum was thought of as a more expensive product with a thicker composition layer on top of the fabric base. Oil cloth seemed to have a much thinner top layer and did not last as long
 
We had some of those "readicut" rugs. You bought a kit which came with all the wool strips and a sort of canvas base marked in the pattern of your choice.
I remember the one in front of the coal fire had a burn mark where an ember fell on it before being removed by Dad who then stamped on the rug.
 
pjmburns said:
We had some of those "readicut" rugs. You bought a kit which came with all the wool strips and a sort of canvas base marked in the pattern of your choice.
I remember the one in front of the coal fire had a burn mark where an ember fell on it before being removed by Dad who then stamped on the rug.
Click to expand...
There were often problems with gaps in the floorboards which my Dad would pack with newspapers to stop the cold air blowing through. Likewise the gaps between the skirting board and the floor.
 
We have wooden laminate floors which were installed about 15 years ago. The fitted carpets are now laid in the garage, keeping the Bentley warm.

When we bought the house in 1974 it had the normal Wimpey’s plastic tiled floors, and we started married life with a square of carpet and a second hand push lawn mower both bought from a lady who was selling up to move into a smaller house.
 
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When we moved in I found one of those push mowers lost in the long grass, used it for all of the nine years we were there...............after a fair bit of oiling. ;)
 
Eric,

’ow’s yer back?

We have fitted carpet upstairs, probably have had that since the 1980s at least, and when my folks moved, in about 1970, the new house was carpeted fully. I must say that I do prefer the laminated wood flooring to a fitted carpet in the living/dining room. Two of my aunts had fitted carpets laid over oak parquet floors in the late 60s, sacrilegious in my opinion, but still. I also recall a Minton tiled floor down the entrance hall of my gran’s Victorian terraced house in Smethwick. No fitted carpets there!
 
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Johnfromstaffs said:
We have wooden laminate floors which were installed about 15 years ago. The fitted carpets are now laid in the garage, keeping the Bentley warm.

When we bought the house in 1974 it had the normal Wimpey’s plastic tiled floors, and we started married life with a square of carpet and a second hand push lawn mower both bought from a lady who was selling up to move into a smaller house.
Click to expand...
......and you finished with the shortest shag pile in the road

Bob
 
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