New Carpet

You guys!  We have new carpet!  It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here and we love it.  We had been planning on replacing the carpet in the master bedroom since we moved in 8 (!) years ago … and then we decided to go ahead and replace the carpet on the stairs & upstairs hall at the same time since it was looking pretty worn also.  What a huge difference new flooring can make!

To replace the old floral green carpet in the master bedroom, we picked a really soft, dense plush.  I must have brought home at least 20 different plush, beige carpet samples for the bedroom before deciding on this one.  It’s Risque by Karastan in Tasteful Tan.

It coordinates nicely with the new wall color (SW Accessible Beige) without being completely matchy matchy.  (The carpet has a little less gray in it than the paint.)  Plus, did I mention it’s super soft?  Such an improvement over the old green carpet that I’ve now realized was in “crunchy” territory.  Ick.

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Since we had to move all the furniture for the installation, we also switched out dressers and put this low one opposite the bed to be used as a TV stand.  It makes so much more sense like this – the TV used to be on top of the tall dresser, which was kind of awkward.

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The “sitting area” part of our bedroom is feeling really light and airy now.  What a difference some fresh neutral colors make!  Only thing is, it’s now super obvious that we need to put some effort into decorating.  Curtains, furniture, things on the walls … the works.
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Here is the new dresser we had built to replace the old vanity that used to be in the closet area.  I need to get a piece of glass for the top yet so we actually feel like we can use it (we’re afraid of scratching it even though that would probably be unlikely), but we’re already finding it way more useful than the old cabinet.

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While we were picking carpet for the master bedroom, we decided to also re-carpet the stairs and upstairs hallway.  Originally, we’d planned to put the same carpet in the hallway as in the master bedroom, but neither one of us really loved the way the old plush carpet looked on the steps, so we went with a fine berber-like carpet with a diamond pattern instead.  It is Tristan by Masland in Ivory.

I like the little bit of interest the diamond pattern gives without being overwhelming.  From a distance, it kind of all blends together and just looks neutral.

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And we had the same carpet installed on the landing and the stairs.  Overall, it’s a lot fresher look than what was here before.  I didn’t realize how badly it needed to be replaced until the new carpet went in.  And, same as the bedroom, the new carpet is now making me really feel how sparsely our house is decorated.  Might have to actually hang some things on the walls here, too.
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We picked this carpet primarily based on how we thought it would look on the stairs – and we love it.  It’s a bit more tailored and formal than the tan plush carpet we had before and should hopefully wear really well.  IMG_6935 IMG_6940 IMG_6943

One thing we didn’t totally think through with this carpet is the fact that the pile on it was a lot lower than the old plush carpet it was replacing, so there are some imperfections low on the trim showing now that used to be covered by the old carpet.  We’ll have some patching and touching up paint in our future, but I think it was still worth it.

Since we hired both the removal of the old carpet & pad and the installation of the new, there wasn’t much time between when the old carpet came up and the new went down to get good pictures of the condition of the wood floors underneath, but we did take a couple of cell phone pictures.

The floors on the bedroom side of the master bedroom looked like they probably had a few pet stains, but were otherwise in good condition.  We felt like they would probably be able to be refinished if we wanted to do that the next time around.IMG_5710

We didn’t get any pictures of the “sitting room” side of the bedroom, but the subfloor there is plywood, which wasn’t a huge surprise since that part of the room started life as an exterior porch.  So, if we really wanted wood floors in the master bedroom, we’d have to install some new flooring there.

As for the stairs, they actually looked a little better than I expected.  All of the old trim pieces were still in tact (we expected some of them to be missing).  There’s old paint on the risers and either brown paint or a really opaque stain on the treads.  Either way, it would be a good effort to bring them back to life as finished wood stairs.  Maybe next time …

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Anyway, that’s it for our carpet update.  Amazing what a difference some new flooring can make, huh?

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