Well, I finally did it. I bought a rug for the living room. For the last year (plus), I have been a complete indecisive mess about what I wanted. And in the meantime, we’ve had a mess of a make-shift rug – 12 commercial carpet squares (in the same general color family) that I snagged from an old elementary school project at my last job. I’m not even sharing a picture. Why? Because it’s actually that hideous.
But this week I reached my breaking point and just ordered one. A nice 8×10 traditional wool rug from Pottery Barn. I have to say the 15% off sale they’re having right now (along with an additional 10% designer discount AND a $25 gift card) pretty much sealed the deal. It should be on my doorstep sometime next week. What do you think??
To fully appreciate the importance of this decision, I think we need to revisit the last rug purchase I made for our living room. This was months ago, and I probably should have written about it then (bad blogger), but I was completely defeated by the experience and couldn’t bear to write about. Now that I’m past the drama, it’s really rather amusing. So here it goes…
I’d just recently attended an event at the Houston Design Center with my friend Marie. We listened to interior designer extraordinaire, Mary McDonald, speak about some of her recent projects. She was such a riot – if you ever get a chance to hear her speak, it was actually quite fun!
One thing I specifically remember her saying, was something about putting a contemporary rug with grandma’s furniture…how it could instantly update your whole space. Granted, she’s talking about multi-million dollar homes with million dollar decorating budgets, which doesn’t exactly describe me. But since we’re definitely living with grandma-esque hand-me-down furniture, I filed that tidbit in the back of my mind.
A few weeks later when I was perusing Joss and Main, another one of those daily deals websites, I ran across this Angela Adams rug and just knew I’d struck gold. It was just the colors I was envisioning for our living room (greys, teals, greens)…contemporary, but not too contemporary…not to stuffy and just a little bit fun. In my little head, it was just perfect. So I started designing the entire living room around it. This bad boy was just the inspiration I needed.
Then the rug arrived at our door. (You’ll want to pause here for dramatic effect…) After I did a little happy dance because the perfect rug had finally arrived, Ethan helped me lug it into the house. Did I mention it was 9×12? I’ve now come to realize is slightly large for our living room…even if you’re trying to make a statement. But apparently I was distracted by this amazing deal.
Once we got it inside, I took a closer look and could see the edges of the rug through the protective plastic. That’s when I started to get that “oh no what did you just buy??” sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. The edges of this rug were most definitely brown – not the beautiful grey/blue/green combination I was expecting. And here’s what the grand unveiling produced.
There were so many things wrong it.
#1 – The field color was brown, not grey.
#2 – The blues and greens were a little too “neon” for my liking.
#3 – The berries were MASSIVE!
#4 – Do you see the zebra-esque striping across the entire thing? Ethan has a strong dislike for anything that even remotely suggests an animal print…that may have been the breaking point.
After unrolling this thing, Ethan and I stood in silence for probably 30 seconds before I started jabbering, trying to make it work. I thought if maybe, just maybe, there was furniture on top of it, the rug wouldn’t be quite so obnoxious. But before I got too far, Ethan, aka The Voice of Reason, put his two sense in – “Melissa…it’s just ugly!” I knew he was right. And boy, do I hate being wrong!!
So what did this resourceful girl do? I craigslisted it. (Is that a verb? If not, I just made it one.) Joss and Main wouldn’t accept returns on this particular item (which I knew when I bought it), but since I’d purchased it for considerably less than it retailed online, I started thinking I could make a profit. All I needed was one interested buyer…just one.
I re-listed that rug on craigslist every two to three days for a couple of weeks, just to make sure it didn’t get buried in everyone else’s junk. And finally, I got a bite. A lady who lives just a few miles from us who was redecorating her house. AND her husband was out of town (so as she saw it, he had no say in the purchase). This time I’d really struck gold. She came by, paid just under my asking price, and hauled that awful looking mess of berries away from my house. And the best part? We made $100 of pure profit!
We’re on another craigslist-selling adventure this weekend, that’s been just as amusing…if not more. I’ll definitely have to share the high points. But for now, this girl needs to get her beauty rest – we have a garage sale in the morning!
The Dominion Project 