Carpet and a Cushy Carpet Pad

It is so amazing to finally have carpet in the basement!  Since I have been working down there over the past few weeks, I appreciate being able to walk downstairs without getting cold feet!  The basement, although far from finished, feels so much more done now.  Covering up the big expanse of cement is huge.

I absolutely LOVE our carpet.  I love it so much I am dedicating this whole post to gushing about it.  I love it so much I kind of want to rip out and replace all the other carpet in the house.  Two things make this carpet great; the quality of the carpet and the carpet pad.

Since we are using Martha Stewart paint colors for our whole house color palette, we decided to check out her line of carpet at Home Depot.  Remember how the paint colors are coordinated with handy color key symbols?  We use colors from the “star” palette.  Well, her carpet line shares the same symbols.  So, any “star” carpet should go perfectly with the other colors in our home.

I think we chose an unconventional color…conventional being beige.  The rest of our home has beige carpet and we hate it.  We have a black dog, a border collie mix, that sheds a lot.  My beige carpet looks grey most of the time.  We vacuum frequently, but longed for a carpet color that would make the dog hair less noticeable between vacuuming.  We knew a darker brown, grey, or blue carpet would be best.  As we looked at samples, the grays and browns quickly felt boring and not right.  Then, we happened upon a pretty gray-blue.  It is Martha Stewart Mount Vernon carpet in Shale Gray.

Now, maybe you understand partly why I opted to paint the walls white.  I had big plans to bring in color on the floor.  The carpet is decidedly blue, but neutral enough for carpet.  We love cool tones and plan to infuse this room with other shades of blue, so the carpet will fit right in.

Martha’s carpet line has many different pile options.  We went straight for the loop piles!  We wanted texture and a nice dense carpet.  This type of carpet is called a berber.  It is all loop, no cut pile.  We have cut pile throughout the rest of the house and it just looks frayed and matted all the time.  The loops on the new carpet have some variation in height creating a nice texture across the carpet.

Would you believe the carpet for the basement cost more per sq ft than the cork?  The sticker price on the carpet is 2.98 per sq ft.  Which looks better than 3.98 per sq ft for the cork, except you need a carpet pad for carpet.  We opted for the 89-cent per sq ft carpet pad, making the full deal about $3.87 per sq ft.  Once you figure in the installation costs, carpet gets pricey.  It was a flat $37 to install the carpet, except on the stairs.  We had to pay another $170 for the carpet installation on the stairs.  By the way, I still found a way to save some money on the carpet.  By buying it at the same time as the cork, we took advantage of the same 10% off promotion.

We chose one of the most expensive carpet pads.  I do not think the carpet pad is the right place to cut corners, especially not over a hard, cold basement floor.  We chose the ScotchGard urethane foam carpet pad, because it was one of the thickest and said it was mold-resistant (probably a good thing for a basement).  The carpet pad was worth every penny!!!

When the installer finished and invited me to walk downstairs, the first thing I noticed was the cushion in my step…literally.  The carpet was so lovely to walk on.  It is cushy and springy.  The combination of the densely looped carpet and thick carpet pad is heavenly.  My boys thought it was so comfortable they had a wrestling match in the middle of the floor.  We had to stop one from jumping down the stairs, thinking the cushy new carpet would fully cushion his fall.

I think we will be saving up for an upgraded carpet pad and new carpeting for the upstairs.