Before and after

Sometimes you look around you and realize that an aspect of your home has been vaguely irritating you for some time and it reaches a point where you are motivated to do something about it. Such was the case early last week with one of the living room rugs. This one to be precise.

This rug was a bonus gift left for us when we moved into the Big Ugly House a couple of decades ago. There it lived in our bedroom, then getting a promotion when we moved to a more public area. It's not a bad rug; I've always liked how it looked .. when it was vacuumed. The trouble with it was that it had no pile to speak of and it's main hobby was collecting pet hair and trapping it so that no amount of vacuuming could get it all up. The best we could do was to aim for 'not disgusting'. Plus, it was a wee bit too small for the space we had it in. 

I think it ended up being one of those small fixes we could make when there was so much else that was either out of our budget or out of our ability to change. So two weekends ago, I found myself ordering a new rug that was on sale. It arrived yesterday afternoon and J. got everything shifted today. Here it is:

I really like it, though it keeps catching me by surprise every time I walk through the room. (Pretend you don't see that pile of stuff on the coffee table. G. was deep into hand sewing various items and this all got moved so we could eat dinner ) The rug still needs to relax a bit, but not as badly as some rugs we've bought. And it has a decent pile so I'm hopeful we can actually vacuum it. 

If you're curious, the old rug got moved up to the third floor into Y.'s room. Her floor has a tendency to splinter and she is thrilled to have something that will protect her feet.