|
The new carpet and flooring are in and they look great. We had pushed it off as long as we could, but the time had finally come to get it done. My wife, Stacey, had worked hard painting all of the rooms in preparation for their arrival, and the outcome was worth the wait.
It was a journey nearly a year in the making. I guess you could call it a learning journey because there were valuable lessons that we learned along the way. These lessons will make the last rooms that need to be done a little bit smoother sailing, especially in the painting department. But we also got an education in other little aspects of home improvement, which to be honest I wasn’t looking for, but I got anyway. I guess you could call it the trickle down effect.
As I have mentioned in the past, the home improvement movement that is permeating the television airwaves has consumed my wife. The logos HGTV and TLC are permanently burned into all of our TV screens from hours of having those channels on. Every time she is within reach of a television remote she automatically changes the channel to one of these stations.
Guys be warned. If your wife gets hooked on these shows, it is only a matter of time before she will want to implement her newly acquired knowledge. What she will need is a jumping off point; in my case it was the fact that we needed carpet. It was a fact that could not be denied. To be honest, it was long overdue. What ever it is at that point you are totally fucking screwed. But before we could get the carpeting, the bedrooms, hallway, and living room had to be painted, at least in my wife’s opinion. Which as any husband who wants to remain happily married will tell you, is the only fucking opinion that counts.
Armed with hours of education from Trading Spaces University my wife diligently used each little vacation that came up to chip away, room by room, at her projects. Then came the day when the last drop of paint had fallen and the task was complete. Now came what I thought would be the easy part, getting the carpet. Well so I thought.
Let me say something now that many of you may already know. There is a shit load of people that sell carpeting. You may not realize it until you start looking, but once you have opened that door, holy shit, they are everywhere. I always find it amazing how we go through our daily lives oblivious to how massive some industries are. Unless we are in the market for the product, we don’t even notice them.
Open the door we did and we marched right through going to the opposite ends of the spectrum just to see what we would be looking at. We went to a specialty carpet showroom and then to Home Depot thinking that once we continued our search it would give us some insight as to what we would be looking at as far as price was concerned.
Shock number one came from the prices. I wasn’t aware of it, but did you know that carpeting was made out of fucking spun gold? Neither did I, but based on the initial prices we got, it must be. Then there is the friend route. You know, when a buddy of yours tells you that he has a friend that sells and installs carpet and can get you the deal of the century. So you say yeah, that sounds great, and to have his “buddy” call you to set up an appointment.
Time passes and in our little world time is precious. In order to complete this task, we had windows of opportunity that we had to capitalize on. When his “buddy” never calls and we watched our last window close, the deal of the century had gone from gold to shit. In hindsight we realized that even though the entire situation cost us time and some frustration, we were probably better off not going down that road. If his “buddy” was so fucking flaky that he couldn’t even find the time to make a phone call or stop by, when was he going to find the time to install our carpet?
Time passed and we backed off our search waiting for the next window to open, scrutinizing every piece of advertising pertaining to carpeting that came our way. One piece of advice I can give you, when it comes in the mail, unsolicited, don’t bother calling. We contacted two of these dickheads. In their ads, in big bold letters, they advertised that they would come to your home and give you a free estimate. Both declined to come and wanted to do it over the phone, or better yet we should measure our rooms and go to their store. What a fucking waste of time that was.
The whole time this search was going on, Stacey kept leaving me notes on my desk to try calling Empire Carpets. You know, the guys that seem to advertise non-stop on television. I kept balking, thinking that if they were spending that much money on TV ads, that somewhere in the mix somebody would have pay for all that advertising. I figured that someone would be me. But with the next window about to open and the bad luck we kept having, I figured what could it hurt?
Hurt? Actually it was quite the opposite. If anything, they moved so fast we were the ones who had to back off a bit. Our window was approaching but it wasn’t quite there yet. After I called them, our sales rep Bryan was there the next day samples in hand. He quickly measured up all of the rooms involved and gave us a quote. His price on carpet was already lower than everyone else that we talked to, but he didn’t know that. After we added flooring to the front entry, we got a multi-flooring discount, which took the carpet price down even more. When we called him back to let him know he had the job, we asked if had really given us the best possible price, and voila, he lowered his price even further. He closed the deal in a flash and left us happy in the process.
Then there was the installation question. When talking with everybody else they all used independent contractors. This means that should there be an installation problem you have to contact the installer, not the person who sold you the carpet. This can lead you down a road lined with misery and fraught with problems. Not Empire. Their installers work for them and if and when you have a problem, there is no passing the buck.
This turned out to be a good thing, because there were a couple of minor problems. With one phone call to the Empire hot line, two days later the installers were there and corrected the flaws and were gone in minutes, no fuss no muss. On every level Empire proved my fears and reservations wrong. I still don’t know who is paying for all that TV advertising, but it certainly didn’t feel like it was me.
Had I just taken the advice and the notes that were left on my desk by my in-house home improvement addict, I probably wouldn’t have had to walk so long down the carpeted road.
|
