From Rug Mistake(s) to Rug Success!

For those of you with brains, you’ll likely read this post and ask yourself, “Did she not even remember the name of her own blog?”

Truly, it was the exact thing I thought of when I ordered the first “Rug Mistake” (and yes, there were TWO).

No one ever accused me of being a fast learner.

Let’s back up a sec. This post continues the tale of our mudroom/back hall refresh. Making the new DIY softgoods (Roman shades and bench cushions) was the easy part. Choosing a large area rug….not so much.

The DIY cushions and shades were a great complement to this black sisal doormat that we found at the Mackenzie-Childs Barn Sale :

But once you get past the door…there’s a much bigger space for muddy, snowy, sloppy feet to land as you can see in this old and terrible photo:

When we first moved in, I hated covering that beautiful floor. but imagine the challenge of six of us coming in either door, balancing precariously on the postage stamp of rug, waiting for each to take off sloppy shoes and get them out of the way while the next person was trying to enter.

SO, yes, there has always been an area rug there. And now I needed a new one.

THIS IS WHERE I GET MYSELF INTO TROUBLE: Print curtains, Courtly Check doormat, and Buffalo Plaid pillows. There was already a lot going on here.

AND…I though I wish I was a millennial minimalist, I’m still drawn to the same types of prints and things that are more, ahem, of my generation. I considered all of these rug candidates:

My “in-house advisors” nixed the black and white options, thinking there would be print overload. I’m honestly not too sure that would be the case…given the scale of the prints. But, I decided to take their advice and stick with a solid.

We’d done the “water soaker” rubber lined rugs before…they don’t vacuum well. The driveway salt gets stuck in the grooves and decides to make a permanent home.

Since we still were in full-bore sloppy season, I decided that solid black would be a great solution. (YES! I know…we have a YELLOW LAB!!! Hold that thought, it gets even better.)

Since I didn’t know WHAT I wanted, I picked a fairly inexpensive black rug from Amazon.

Out of frustration, and with my computer offering a COMPLETE lack of depth perception, I ordered this:

When I opened the package, the 1970’s called out a major “hellooooo, baby!” There was SO much shaggy goodness, I laid down on it, and called out, “Alexa! Play Barry White’s greatest hits!”

🎵Oh, baby…🎶

Glad no one came to the door.

And while Barry cooed, “Never, never gonna give you up,” I re-rolled and repackaged the rug and raced back to the computer…where I couldn’t arrange the return fast enough. You know why? ” ‘Cause, quittin’ just ain’t my bit.”

Mother of pearl.

Then I checked out Home Depot on line, which offered this very inexpensive, tone-on-tone option:

Yes. Looped pile, subtle textured print. Now we’re talking.

Until you receive the actual rug and find the looped pile is not really anything like the picture above. It’s actually like this:

Go ahead. Zoom in. I’ll wait.

Yeah…what the hell happened to the cute ivy print?

Oh, and the solid black color… Even my Dyson Animal Vac took one look and said, ‘No can do, lady!” “Go ahead, vac three times a day.”

Who ever would have thought that a black rug and a yellow lab would be problematic? (You did, right?) On the flip side, I guess I ended up with a black and white rug after all.

But not for long. Dog hair is never a good first impression….unless it’s still on the dog.

After one loooong and final herculean vacuuming session, and I rolled that rug right out to the local thrift store.

Let’s recap: I put myself thought all this frustration JUST to match my bargain Mac-Chi rug…which by now had faded to a greenish black.

So, I turned to America’s store once again and decided to look for something more neutral.

I chose this:

And proved true the idiom, “even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.”

The basketweave texture, which I thought might be a distraction, works fine with everything else in the hallway. And…in the bitterest of ironies…”everything else” no longer includes one of the biggest variables that guided the selection of everything else.

Yep…the Mac-Chi rug got the boot! Although not completely!!! I taped it off with painters’ tape, spray painted it black again, and it’s now outside on the back step.

I ordered the same seagrass rug in fun-size to replace the Mac-Chi and serve as the door mat. (The light from the windows makes it look like a different hue, but It’s actually a perfect match to the larger rug.)

I really love how it will hide the yellow lab hair clean it looks. Seriously, I do vacuum all the time anyways…but the black border keeps me honest. (You do know dog hair drives me crazy, right?!) Also, I’ve read that you can just take seagrass outside and hose it off if it soils.

We’ll see. But for now the rugs have turned out to be a great addition to the “accidental” outcome of the room.

BUT….there’s one more important piece to this puzzle. One relatively simple DIY thing I’m kinda proud of–and that I never would’ve expected, really–pulled the whole refresh together for me.

I can’t wait to tell you all about it and show you the whole room “reveal”…

Next time.

🤦🏼‍♀️

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BTW, here is my super happy find!!! Two rugs <$145. Affiliate-linked if you’re in the market for a great rug dealio:

FYI, I have debated using affiliate links. I think they’re nbd when I see them on other sites but I don’t actively seek to use them. On the flip, if I send Jeff Bezos a referral, he is welcome to send me $.008 per click as long as it doesn’t cost YOU anything.