My Living Room Area Rug: FLOR Carpet Tiles~

While I was in the process of looking for area rugs to use in my Living Room Design, I received a catalog in the mail from FLOR.  I was familiar with FLOR Carpet Tiles, but when I opened the catalog, I was smitten with their new designs.  For those that are not familiar with FLOR, it is an "innovative system of carpet squares that you assemble to create custom rugs, runners or [even] wall-to-wall designs."

This is the picture (via FLOR.com) that first caught my eye and made me want to see what FLOR had to offer.

I was not only impressed by their designs, but I liked the idea that I could put the patterns together myself to create my own unique, custom rug.

I had a hard time narrowing down my choices, but I finally decided on  Lasting Grateness in black.  I liked the bold, graphic pattern. (That, and I couldn't quite convince the Hubby that the zebra print would look good in the room. Lol!)

When the box arrived with my tiles, I pulled them out and plopped them on the ground in the living room.  That's when the fun began.  Putting the rug together was a bit like putting a puzzle together. (Note: the tiles are not meant to fit together in a pattern...they are meant to be random.) 

Boy 3 and I had a good time working together to decide where each square should go.  Once we finally decided on the right configuration for the tiles (don't I look happy?)...

 I used the FLOR dots to attach the tiles to one another.  And that was it!

One of the great things about this rug - especially for a family with little kids - is the fact that if one of the tiles gets stained or otherwise destroyed, just that tile can be replaced instead of having to replace an entire rug. In addition, FLOR tiles are environmentally friendly and can even be recycled once they have outlived their usefulness.

I'm really happy with my FLOR custom rug.  And I love the graphic punch it adds to the room!

Disclosure:  FLOR provided me with my rug in exchange for this review, but I did not receive monetary compensation.  All opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.  Any quotes are taken directly from the FLOR website.

My Living Room: The Reveal~

Hello, my lovelies!!  I'm so excited to share our living room with you all today!  It's been a really fun room to put together with some interesting details that I can't wait to share.  So off we go...

First, the BEFORE photos...

Exciting, wasn't it?  As you can see, the room was just begging for some interest.  So we got busy working on it.

Let's be honest.  It was a lot of work.  But we had a lot of fun in the process. So without further ado, here are the AFTER photos...

I am a big fan of neutrals, and in this room I went for a neutral palette, but I didn't want it to be boring, so I mixed it up with some great patterns.

I also wanted to warm up the grays and blacks, so we chose to add some brown to the palette.

The rug is from Flor (more on that later) and the coffee table is from World Market.

The sofa is an IKEA Ektorp series.  The pillows are from Etsy.  (The large one in the center is from my fabulous sponsor Elisabeth Michael.)

That cute rustic birdcage was a gift from my mother.

We changed the stair wall from chocolate brown to this fabulous charcoal gray, Magnetite by Martha Stewart.

I had been thinking of doing a gallery wall in the stairwell, but the Hubby suggested we create one on the charcoal wall.  I love it!! The white frames against the gray are beautiful!  Our plan is to add more frames as our budget allows until the whole wall is filled.

The tufted chairs are from TJ Maxx.

The white frames are from IKEA.

On the window wall, I framed out the windows with natural linen curtains from IKEA.  To create architectural interest (since there was no fireplace) we put a bookcase, and topped it with a beautiful large-scale charcoal done by the hubby's father.

The leather chair is the hubby's and was purchased years ago (pre-blogging days) so I don't remember the name of the shop.  The faux fur pillow is from Target.

I hung the curtains, higher and wider than the windows to create the illusion of the windows being larger than they actually are.

The antler was a gift from my mother.  I love it coupled with the folded book I made a few years ago, it adds such great texture.

The entry is one of my favorite parts of this whole room design.  What appears to be wallpaper on the wall, is actually hand done.  I'll tell you all about how I created it in an upcoming post.

I topped the console with a photo purchased from IKEA, as well as the hubby's photo of train tracks in a tunnel.

I'm really happy with how it all came together!  It just proves that neutral doesn't have to be boring. In fact, they can be down right lovely!!

Have a great day~



Living Room Progress - a mini reveal~

First, let me start by thanking you all for your kind comments on my new haircut! You sure now how to make a girl feel cute!

We have been making progress on our living room redo...and I am really loving the results so far.
Every time I post about a room redo in our house, I feel the need to preface it by saying that we are living in a rental house right now. We cannot paint the walls, we cannot alter the house. So I have to work with the raw material that was here. I would definitely repaint if I could.

THE LIVING ROOM IN VARIOUS BEFORE STATES (MOST RECENTLY THE SOFA WAS SLIPCOVERED IN WARM TAN...NOT PICTURED)

But that said, I'm happy with how the living room is coming together. Over the weekend we painted the dresser, painted the rehabbed console white - this was a subject of much debate between the hubby and myself - and moved it behind the sofa (what a creative place for a console table, huh?) We also began adding in some touches of blue. The room is still in need of some styling and some accessories, not to mention something substantial to replace the console under the large charcoal (we're thinking a bench is in order) but here is a look at how it's coming together so far.

THE LIVING ROOM AFTER (MOSTLY FINISHED -THAT IS)

I just noticed that I didn't actually include a picture of the console painted white (or the fireplace for that matter - but I have posted plenty of those photos recently)...I promise to post one of the rehabbed-rehabbed console in the near future...my bad.

Frugal Friday goes live Thursday at 10:00 pm EST. Can't wait to have you all join me here for the Frugal goodness!

Have a great day~

And The Living Room Gets All Dressed Up~

A couple of weeks ago I posted about the fact that I needed to replace my living room rug. The rug we had was pretty with golds, browns and reds. But since I was going to have to replace it, I decided that I wanted to go with something more neutral because I really wanted to introduce some blues and greens to my palette instead of the warmer tones that I had been using.

RUG BEFORE

If you recall, I was set on using a jute or sisal-type rug. But, after asking the opinions of you, my lovely readers, I had many people suggest the idea of using indoor/outdoor carpet. To be honest, that is something I had never really considered. I had this vision in my head of indoor/outdoor being something along the lines of astroturf. I just didn't think it could be something I would want in my living room. I was also told by many people that sisal and jute have a difficult time standing up to traffic. Even though we have a family room, our living room sees quite a bit of traffic, and I didn't want to have to replace the rug quickly, so that also made me reconsider.


To make a long story short (really, Wendy, I didn't think you could do that...you might be thinking) after researching a bit, I was pleasantly surprised with the range of indoor/outdoor rugs I was able to find. But, then there was the budget constraint. The hubby and I were pooling the money we received from our parents for Christmas...but we still didn't have a huge budget for a new rug.


Enter Costco. Yes, Costco. While we were there one afternoon before Christmas, I happened to notice some area rugs. I walked casually over to the display thinking that there was absolutely no way that I was going to see what I was looking for. After all, I had been scouring the internet, home improvement stores, catalogs...all to no avail.


You can probably guess the rest of the story. There in the front of the display was one rug. The exact right size, the exact right color....AND the exact perfect price. I tried to be nonchalant about it...but I may have yelled the hubby's name across the crowded store as I flailed my arms back and forth in the air to get his attention two rows away. And he may have shot me one of those "are you crazy?" looks. But as he got closer and realized what I found, he was almost as excited as I was.


So we bought that baby. Loaded her up...and here she is. An indoor/outdoor (read that as easy clean-up), neutral-toned beauty. Can you say LOVE?

CARPET AFTER

Okay, so once we got the rug in the room, I felt an intense need to finally get a coffee table. We had been looking and looking on Craigslist and KSL.com (the local online want-ads) for weeks or possibly months with no luck. But that night, the hubby hopped online and found the PERFECT coffee table....again for the perfect price! (I mean it MUST have been fate!!)

So the very next day, while I was laid-up in bed with the worst stomach flu I think I've ever had...the hubby...with children in tow....went and bought the coffee table. And because it had a blue base (which was not the right color blue) he even refinished it for me...that very day...okay it really took two days, but the story sounds better if you think he did it all in one day. Ha!

And now our living room is almost complete. I plan on switching the sofa slipcover back to the white one, and placing my rehabbed console behind the sofa where it belongs while placing a dresser where the console is now. AND, of course, bringing in some blue and green...probably in the form of pillows and accessories. Oh, and accessorizing that pretty coffee table with something besides my decorating books. :-)

But what a difference the carpet and coffee table make!! Can we hear a collective "Woot Woot!"?

For now, I'm just going to sit here and enjoy the view! Have a great day~

A Little Living Room Facelift~

This is the story of how a series of unfortunate delivery events ended up benefitting both my living room and my pocket book.

Clear back in April I blogged about the sweet chair below, with which I was completely and totally smitten. Well, I ordered said chair...two of them actually.

And I waited, and waited, and waited. And they didn't come. Now, I'm not going to go into all the details of what happened, because I actually really love Tar-jay, and I'm willing to overlook this experience, because I just can't stop shopping there. But suffice it to say, that there were some seemingly-avoidable errors made that ended up in my returning said chairs.

Sigh.

And so I thought, and thunked, and thinked about what to do because this is how my living room looked at the time. YIKES. The mismatched chairs had. to. go.

And the more I thought about my dilemma, the more my mind returned to my pretty TJMaxx beauties that sat on either side of my rehabbed console.

And I finally decided to bite the bullet, and see how they would look in place of my mismatched chairs.

And I loved it!! Loved. it. Because I am actually a neutral girl at heart, and my desire to infuse color by adding the yellow chairs, may have been a little bold for me. They probably wouldn't have lasted anyway, even though they are adorable, because I'm afraid they were just too bright for the space.

So my neutral beauties shall remain. But, they are much smaller in scale than the two chairs that were previously there...and although I wanted a coffee table before, the living room actually SCREAMS for a coffee table now. So I am on a red-alert look out for a pretty square table to rehab....or perhaps to construct. And...I've decided to make two smallish ottomans that will fit under the console and provide additional seating to replace the two lost chairs.

And while I've got you all emotionally invested in my living room (ha ha), I wanted to ask your opinion...I'm thinking about making a couple of chocolate-colored throw pillows for the two chairs that will blend with the pillows currently on the sofa [pictured above]. To see what it will look like I borrowed some from the boys' bedroom. What do you all think? Do you like them with brown pillows? (the ones I make would be slightly smaller in scale.) Because I value your opinions, my dear readers, I'm begging asking you to please weigh-in with your opinion in the comments.

And so, in the end, the delivery mishap really was a good thing after all. There's always a silver lining, isn't there?

And I'm sure you're dying to know what I did with the mismatched chairs...well, the overstuffed tan chair is now in the downstairs family room, and the leather chair (the hubby's favorite) found its rightful place as part of a reading nook in the little boys' room. ...And they all lived happily ever after. (Until I decide to tweak things again anyway.)

Awesome artwork above the chair...from Modern Bird Studios.

Have a great day~