Rug Rules

I don't think I have ever purchased a rug that wasn't for the kitchen or bathrooms... And maybe one or two mat's for guests to wipe their feet before they come into the house. Needless to say, I am not an expert when it comes to rugs. 

When you walk into the front door of our house, there is an entry way that leads to what I can only call a "great room". Even though it is not huge, it encompasses three different living areas. A sitting area, the living room and the dining area (which is on a raised foundation). 

Now, this great room is weird. It was weird when we first bought the house and we have been trying to, well, un-weird it. The house was built in the late 70s, and it used to have something called a conversation pit. The only reason I know this is because Denise was explaining our house to her coworkers and apparently one of them had been to our house way back in the day and called it a conversation pit. Small world, right? 

Still wondering what in the heck a conversation pit is? Here are a few I found.


This one is actually from some Museum of Art. Come to see our very colorful, artistic piano? Or how about our artistic bookcases? What kind of stinkin' art museum is this?

(Source: LA Times Blog)

This one is from the 80s. I bet ours looked a lot like this one.

(Source: Ugly House)

This one reminds me of the pit that was in Get Him to the Greek.  Except it had a bright green couch.

(Source: Flickriver)

Ours is basically concrete steps leading down to an area with a concrete bench that surrounds the perimeter. Super comfortable, right? I know. Maybe it had carpet on it at one time or another. The previous owners were obviously not conversationalists and they built a wood sub-floor to level the room and create a crawl space/storage area. Along with this genius idea they decided it would be prudent to put a trap door in the middle of this wood floor... which is so easy to hide when you glue wood flooring squares to the wood sub-flooring. Plus the large metal handle gave it away... Like I said, genius. 

Bryan and I (mainly Bryan) ripped up the wood flooring, down came the wall that separated the sitting area to the living room, and we carpeted the whole ding dang thing, and here is a picture of the trap door.

I'm thinking of submitting that picture to that Kodak photography contest this year. It's art, people. ART. Are you wondering what the heck rugs have to do with any of this? Why I went off on some wild tangent of conversation pits? 

WE HAVE TO HIDE THE TRAP DOOR. Duh. If you didn't make that leap, I don't think I can help you. Who cares if you didn't ASK for help. I can't help you. 

Now, that is our first problem. The second problem is that we bought engineered flooring from Lumber Liquidators that is a deep, darkish, not-red-in-any-way color and our dining room table is that light oak color. They clash. It looks awesome. So, another rug is needed. 

And of course, Bryan, love of my life that he is, insists on having a rug in the entryway. Because his sole purpose in life is to complicate mine. This super reasonable and not hard at all request now requires me to find three rugs that will all be in the same space. 

So, I've been pursuing different websites and stores and I really had no idea what I was doing. I mean, how do you LIKE a rug? It's just a...rug! Basically, I would go to a website, and control-click on the rugs I liked so that it would bring up a separate tab. Then, I would look at all the different tabs and I started to find that a lot of the rugs had defined similarities. The colors were often cool tones, the patterns not busy... I could definitely see a pattern. The other pattern I saw was that most of them were in the $250-$300 range, which was not in the budget. Especially since I needed three rugs. 


Now, armed with a defined preference in rugs and a budget in mind, I had to decide what I was going to do about three rugs in the same room. 

Three of the same rug? No. That sounds like a bad idea, even to me. Pretend that each room is separate and buy a rug that fits that particular room? Eh... That didn't sound good either. I was talking to Kari about it and she reminded me that I could ask Stacie. Stacie is Alison's sister-in-law and went to school for interior design. So I text messaged her and she said three different rugs, that coordinate. Whew. Done and done. 

A few weeks ago at Lowes, I fell in love with this rug, the price, and the fact that it matches the vibe I want my house to project.We went last night after dinner and Bryan approved of it. We bought a 5x8 for $129. Such a great price!

I'd been thinking all day about what type of rug to get for the dining area. I felt that a natural fiber, soft rug that had dark and light wood tones with cushion the blow of the two opposite woods being next to each other. We looked, and found one that had different tones of brown and a black border. The rug we bought was a 8x10 and it was $139, I think... I couldn't find it on Lowes.com but I'll post an update later. 


***Updated to conclude picture of Rug***


Our rug looks a lot more... Brown than this... Oh well. 

Once everything is in I'll take pictures. Hopefully, I won't hate it and have to buy and return a million rugs. :)