First (fail), a new sisal rug. It came in the mail two days ago after an impulse internet purchase. I've been feeling ambivalent about the priceless-antique-and/or-yard-sale Persian (see previous posts) that was camped out in our living room for several reasons:
1) It's a bit too small for the space and sort of appears to be floating around the room.
2) It has a slight worn spot (read: hole) in one end, and I don't want my high-traffic living room to make the damage worse.
3) It's very traditional, and I'm not sure that's the direction I want to take in the living room in our little house in the Pacific Northwest-- it seems a little dressy for a place where "business casual" means yoga pants and Skecher's Shape-Ups. Not that I want my house to look like the interior equivalent of yoga pants.
4) I really, really want it in my bedroom instead.
So this website was having a major sale, and I scored an ENORMOUS $500 rug for $160 with free shipping. It obviously wasn't the most expensive thing in the first place, but I had high hopes that it would be slightly grayish, a little knobby, textured-- if not yoga pants, then a comfy-but-stylish sweater.
What I got kind of looks like industrial carpeting:
And please don't mind the utter lack of staging, unless you count my water glass on the coffee table, Ray's on the side table, and my raincoat on the Windsor chair.
See? It looks like a big ol' sheet of beige elementary-school carpet, except nobody would ever make beige elementary-school carpet because beige carpet is horribly stain-prone. It causes the corduroy side chair (known to everyone in my family as "the gold chair"-- it'll get reupholstered just as soon as I teach myself how to reupholster chairs) to appear weirdly camouflaged. What's worse, it arrived dirty-- the plastic sleeve it'd been packaged in was wide open on both ends, and the UPS man thoughtfully laid it down under our carport with one end of the rug laying directly on our (wet, dirty) paved driveway.
So it must go back from whence it came. We've already rolled it up. Sigh. On a positive note, we moved Grammy's Persian into the bedroom and I love it there. Photos to come.
Second (win), Phase II of the fireplace project (Refinish Damaged Hardwood Floors) is finally complete. It started when we ripped up the huge tile pad that had been installed over the original skinny hearth and about a foot of the wood flooring. The wood looked awful, but we thought we might be able to salvage it. Here's a flashback to my dad ripping up the giant tile pad:
Second (win), Phase II of the fireplace project (Refinish Damaged Hardwood Floors) is finally complete. It started when we ripped up the huge tile pad that had been installed over the original skinny hearth and about a foot of the wood flooring. The wood looked awful, but we thought we might be able to salvage it. Here's a flashback to my dad ripping up the giant tile pad:
Ugh, hard to believe the fireplace used to look like that! Anyhow, here's a close-up of the floor after we cleaned it up some:
And a wide shot of the whole living room. As you can see, it looks pretty rough:
After Dad pulled up the tile pad, I asked my mom's advice on how to repair the damage. How would I ever find a stain that would match the rest of the flooring? I mean, this house is 60-some-odd years old. Without missing a beat, Mom glanced at the floor and said, "I'm pretty sure that's Early American." Now, at this point I'm old enough to know that my mom is always right, especially where interiors are concerned. So, realizing that no more research would be required, I bought some Early American. And after some careful prep-- sanding, filling holes, damp-mopping, sweeping-- I applied a coat of stain. My faith in my mother's omniscience was confirmed all over again. See where I've applied the stain in the following photo? PERFECT MATCH:
(How in the hell she knew that, I'll never be sure. But she did. Magic? When I asked her, she replied, and I'm not kidding, "Well, I knew it was too light to be Special Walnut." The woman knows her stains.)
And so three days and three coats of polyurethane later we have just-about-perfect-looking hardwood floors in the living room. If you know what to look for, you can still see a dark line on the floor on each side where the tile pad stuck out over the floor (it wouldn't come out despite all my sanding), but I'm pretty satisfied with the final result:
See that stack of white marble subway tiles on the hearth? We were going to use them there, but I think that's too much white. On the hunt for 18' x 18" Montauk black slate instead.
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