A Rug Conundrum

Conundrum... pulling out the big words today. We are in the final push of getting ready for my in-laws to come visit and let me tell you I didn't get much of anything done on my list. We have been so busy!  I did get a few things done and I haven't stopped yet so we will see what I get accomplished.

I am still pushing forward on the living room and all 4 panels are done for the windows! We are still trying to figure if there is a way to boost the height so I haven't hemmed them yet. But I wanted to talk about rugs today. When we moved in we had fully intended to redo the hardwoods downstairs but we ran into a few problems. So we ended up installing carpet in the living room and dining rug but due to a time crunch didn't have a lot of choices. So we have tan carpet. Boring. For this living room makeover my thought has been to get an area rug for in between the couch and tv. We have had 4 contenders and with the 4th arriving today I think we finally have a winner.

We started out with a rug that I got from Home Depot on a special one day sale kind of thing.

 

I paid $50 with free shipping for this 5' x 8' seagrass rug. I loved the natural fiber, texture and pattern but the scratchiness of the seagrass wasn't working for us. We have two jute rugs in other places in our house and those work great for us but the seagrass wasn't working. This sat in our guestroom for two months before I finally dragged it downstairs and put it on craigslist.  When I listed it the same link that I put in this post showed the rug costing $124 (now it's only $80.) Since we really only used the rug for about a month I asked $40 and that is what it sold for. I feel ok with that!

Our second contender is one we used for about 2 months.

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This is a little more modern looking than something I would normally pick but I was trying to find something the hubs liked too. I got this one from overstock with coupons and O Dollars it was about $60. It 100% cotton and was good until after 2 months of normal use it started to get really bad pulls. The white diamonds were not woven into the rug they were embroidered ON the rug and were very easy to catch.  I have this rug put away for use somewhere else maybe.

I decided to go back to my inspiration pictures that I had saved on pinterest. I found a lot of natural fiber rugs in the pictures. Since we already tried that route I looked too see if any of the rooms had any other things in common.

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Notice it? Plaid rugs. I don't think I would have thought of it on my own but after I figured it out it seemed like a pretty good choice. The next trick was to find one. I tried Overstock again and ordered this.

 It was a disaster. It wasn't navy (although the description said it was) it was black. AND it was the scratchiest rug I have ever felt. I didn't even bother to unroll it. I just repackaged it and sent it back.

I searched for navy plaid rugs everywhere and finally found  some luck on pinterest (surprised?) And it led me to this.

I love when they give you more perspective on a rug then just the pattern!  I think it may be the same rug as my second inspiration picture. It's cotton but the pattern is woven in. The beige is in between the cream of our sofa and the tan of our carpet and I LOVE the pattern. It was $200 (ouch!) but I signed up for the email list and got $25 off which covered the shipping at least.

So I think we have Finally found our rug. Anyone else debating a big purchase?