mike wrote:

After it was done, I regretted not throwing them out the first day.
But how do you find someone who is NOT an idiot and takes pride in
his work?
After reading the links presented in this thread, I dread the upcoming
carpeting fiasco. Nobody is gonna take the time to do all the things
set forth in the CRI installation guidelines in one of the links
presented earlier in this thread.

Quality of work is the second reason to do-it-yourself (the first is cost).

I suspect the third reason for DIY is the pleasure of the effort and the
pride in the result.

You might consider carpet tiles.

A few days after Hurricane Yikes, I scored about 2000 sq ft of 2x2 carpet
tiles. A store in which they were installed suffered a wet floor and used
that as an excuse to have their insurance pay for new carpeting.

For about half the tiles, evidently fixtures were sitting atop them for some
years and they had no wear at all. Checking the manufacturer's number on the
back, I discovered these commercial, heavy wear, carpet tiles retailed for
about $40/yd!

Anyway, with some glue I've carpeted the library in my home and the office
snack-bar. Looks swell and will last forever.

Point is, carpet tiles were a trivial DIY project.