When peeling off the four or five layers of old wallpaper in the sitting room of our one hundred year old terraced town house I eventually got to the original paint and it was a waxy dark green.
A bit of research told me that in these poorer working men’s houses wallpaper was far too expensive back before the First World War and a cheap paint which included some kind of wax to fill any small cracks and keep the plaster together was used.
The interesting point about this paint was that it came in just three rather dark and gloomy colours and apart from the dark green there was a brown and a dull yellow.
These places must have been gloomy! On the floor there would have been no carpets just bare floor boards with a cheap rug or more likely, linoleum throughout. When you see sepia or black and white photographs of this era it makes you wonder whether colour film would have made a lot of difference to the drabness and lack of colour choices available back then.
When you enter a well-stocked carpet store the fantastic range of colours is something that our ancestors could not imagine. Carpets were for the very well-off and even then they were not properly fitted.
It was not until the nineteen seventies that fitted carpets became affordable for younger people buying their first home. Even then the quality was generally quite poor with lightweight foam backed carpets being the most popular.
Most of these were fitted without underlay and newspapers were used to cover the floorboards. It was also fashionable to rip up the old linoleum in the bathroom and fit foam backed cheap carpet.
Looking back to that time it seems a ridiculous thing to put on a bathroom floor but there was little use of tiling except perhaps around the top edge of the bath.
When selecting the fitted carpet of your choice do not forget to buy the right carpet underlay and also do not forget that you can always get a better deal if you buy this online.
Don’t panic about working out how much to order as the best sites will have a ready reckoner for this where you are invited to enter just the length and width of the room and it calculates the amount you need.
This will be delivered to your door so you do not have to lug it back from the shops. There is enough information to help you decide what sort of this cheap underlay is best for you. If there is any doubt you can call the number and speak to someone who will help you with this decision.
Like so many things in life the more you spend the better it is and the thicker material will help preserve the new look of the carpet as there will be more give in the finished article.
Apart from anything else it also feels so much better underfoot when there is a bit of a spring to each step.
For all your carpet underlay needs see more at underlay4u.
