Our inexpensive area rug solution

Posted by Matt

As anyone who has ever moved into a new house knows, the costs don't end with the close of escrow. We've had lots of little expenses since moving into our new place, plus a few big ones. We're still prioritizing some of the latter, but there was one thing that we definitely wanted right away: a rug for the new family room.

In the last remodel in this house, the owners (who owned it prior to the people we purchased from) put really nice tile in throughout the family room, kitchen and nook. We like the tile, but it is much too hard for our son to crawl around on and we liked the area rug the sellers had in the room when we first saw the house. We only briefly considered putting in wall-to-wall carpet in the family room, as that would likely have involved significant effort and expense to tear out the tile.

I'd never shopped for rugs before, and wasn't sure where to look. I picked up a Pottery Barn catalog I found somewhere and found a very nice 9' x 12' rug. Price tag? $1149!! Skip that. We then went to a local rug warehouse store with a huge showroom. We found a really nice rug there that we both liked: $1300! I can't remember if either of these prices included a pad.

My mother-in-law directed us to a website and catalog for a company called Flor. They make carpet tiles, and we liked the idea of being able to customize, install easily and individually wash the tiles, but ultimately decided they were also a bit expensive ( I think around $6/sq. ft.).

Luckily, we spotted a carpet store on the way home from a soccer game one day and popped in to see what they had to offer. The salesman recommended we purchase an area rug cut from a remnant. He didn't have a style we liked, but we did buy a rubber padding layer to put down underneath the rug we hoped to find.

While we waited for that store's inventory to rotate, we discovered another place selling remnants and found a very nice 12' x 12' piece there that they were able to cut to the necessary shape. They also sent it out to have the edges bound and the whole process took less than a week from when we placed the order. My wife haggled a bit for a discount, so final cost for the rug came out to $348. Added to the 122.40 we had paid for the pad, our total for the project was $470.40. We could have spent even less, except that we wanted to get a product that was comfortable, looked nice and would last. I was glad that we shopped at a couple of places as the less expensive styles that we liked at the first few places were lower quality than what we eventually purchased.

The padding was on a roll, but it was very easy to work with and we just trimmed it with a box knife. The carpet went right over the top of that and we are very pleased with the end result pictured above (especially our son, now that he can roll around and play with his toys on it.)

I'm glad we put in a little extra effort to try to save some money on this rug, because eventually we'll probably need another rug over the hardwoods in the living room!