Will you help me figure out how many sq yards of carpet I need AND what I could expect to pay for it?

Are there any discount carpet stores nearby? If not call your realtor and ask for recommendations.

That’s part of the problem. We live in a small town. Anyone the Realtor would recommend would be local, which means high priced. The nearest carpet dealers are 40 – 50 miles away. Rick has to go out of town this week, and it’s not like I can just stop by after work. I just want an estimate of what it might cost, so I can figure out what to do. (I don’t understand why it wanted me to cap the R in Realtor…?)

After searching all over the place, the Home Depot turned out to be the cheapest and easiest to deal with. They do all the measuring for you and they have one low service fee for the installation. The prices vary around the country, but here you can get carpet for as low as $2 per sq yd, and you will need roughly 30 Sq yds, so about $60, plus $200 carpet install, unless they are having a sale, then $150 installation.

Thank you @YARNLADY. But we can save that $200 by doing it ourselves. But I’m trying to figure out how many square yards I have. There’s more to it than adding all the footage together then multiplying by 3, I think…...see, you figure 30 sq yards, I figured 153 sq yards.

I got it. We have 648 sq feet, so we have 72 Sq yards. (Find square feet by multiplying the length times the width, then divide by 9 to get square yards.) Dang…we could get out of there pretty easy…...And laying the carpet has GOT to be a helluva lot easier than the linoleum…...Thanks @YARNLADY for giving me some decent pricing….

I can’t imagine your stairs are 18” deep. Do you mean 8” deep. That was the standard years ago, but now in my area they must be nine inches deept. You say the stairwell is 4×11 so the stairs are 48“wide, 8” tall, and xxxxx deep. The two rooms are 21 sq. yards. When you get the sq. ft. you divide by 9 to get square yards (not by 3 as mentioned above). Also, to know how to figure the footage for the stairs you have to tell us if you are capping the stairs or simply taking one long piece of carpet up the stairwell. If you are capping (a lot more work) you can use remnants. You also need to know that since you are installing yourself you will charged for all of the carpet cut from a roll—it will be more than you need. You have to know how wide the roll is to figure out your cut.

@Dutchess_III Sounds like you did finish the linoleum job. Good for you. When laying carpet, do you know how to use the kicker; it has to be stretched. You’ll also have to have seaming tape and a steamer/heater.

Have you thought about just giving them a carpeting allowance and letting them deal with choosing and laying the carpet themselves?

@BarnacleBill Yes! I second that idea. We had the seller of our house do that, because I hate the ‘neutral’ colors they always choose. It worked out well for us.

@BarnacleBill Oh yes. But my realtor said that just wasn’t a good idea. He said, “Say they like two houses equally. One has carpet, one doesn’t….they’ll pick the one that already has carpet.”....I don’t know. Seems to me they’d see chance to put their own stamp on it but….he’s the pro.

@perspicacious I know. I have guys who’ve done it before.