Falling in love only to be (potentially) thumped in the head...

Wood floors are amazing.

Wood floors are beautiful.

Until you have to clean them every time someone comes into the rooms and breathes. Or even stands in the adjacent room and thinks about breathing.

Wood floors show everything. Which can be a plus and a minus. I'm not delusional in thinking that my house is cleaner than it really is (so...plus) but then I see how quickly dust and dirt accumulate and I am constantly wielding (or thinking about wielding) the Bona mop. That would be the minus if you didn't catch it.

Our living room needs a rug. I need something that where the majority of the foot traffic lays will hold just enough of that dirt to let me vacuum it up quickly. Speaking of which, I want a new vacuum (hint hint: birthday present, cough, Christmas present, cough, random August holiday present, cough cough).



The room also needs something to anchor it. All of our furniture is just currently floating in the space and nothing seems grounded. It's starting to feel more comfortable, but without a rug, the room still feels a little cold.

So, easy enough right? Go buy a rug.

I'm sorry, have we met? You want me to pick something for your house? Done. You want me to pick something for a multi-million dollar building and a corporate client. Done. You want me to pick out a chair (rug, paint color, tile, hardware, art) for my house? Laughable.

Also, this rug has got to be a big'en. So....expensive. So...stupid.

Paying for a floor covering to go on top of a floor? Who was the idiot that thought this was a good idea? I'm going to come up with a way to not have to put a floor covering on top of a floor (that isn't wall to wall carpet). In all my spare time. Don't hold your breath.

So in all this thinking about a rug I had pretty well decided it would be a while before I was willing to commit to anything or pay for anything. For as much as I like to shop, it turns out I kind of hate spending large amounts of money.

Tired of my rambling yet?

This weekend we are headed to Dallas to help my parents move into their interim apartment. They are moving from Wichita Falls and wanted to have a transition space before committing to buying a house. We are heading down Friday afternoon so we'll be ready to help move early Saturday morning. Which means....

We have a lot of stores to hit. We have a cabinet to pick up from IKEA for the kid's bath. And then a whole slew of other things that I just want to look at while at IKEA, West Elm, a fabric store, Wisteria, etc. So I can decide if I'm really going to shell out the dollars for some of these things. This morning as I was thinking about what we were going to look at, this rug clicked into my mind.

It's from IKEA. For the large size it's only $399.00 and based on all of the photos I've seen around the web, I think this might look really good in the living room. I hate the idea of buying a rug at IKEA, maybe because I think it's going to look cheap?

I'd also kind of sworn off using black on the interior my house. It's too stark for me. Residential designers argue that it holds it's own weight, that there should be a small amount of black in every room. While I see their point, I've just never loved having a black piece in some of the spaces. But in this particular living room, I've been toying with the idea of this gray/black/colorful look and think it might be alright.

Image Source

Image Source

The more I researched and fell in love with this rug, the more sure I was that I was going to buy it. But, alas, it's not sold online or in any of the IKEA stores in the US (at least that's what it says online). I guess we'll find out when we get there this weekend. I mean, come on. I can already see it sitting on my living room floor. Now so can you...

Ah, the power and joys of Photoshop. What would I do without it?

So keep your eyes open for me. I've found a couple of other alternatives (Crate and Barrel, etc.) but none have the disjointed line work like the ones above. Therefore, they aren't perfect. Nor are my Photoshop skills. That perspective angle is a joke.

And this concludes our first world whining post of the day. Thank you for stopping by.