The Funk of Forty Thousand Years (& Girl’s Room Progress)

It’s a weird blog post title, I know.  You’ll understand very soon.

Many of you already know that when we moved in to this house there was WHITE CARPET in the dining room, the formal living room (that we use as an office), the family room, and all four bedrooms.  Last spring we had the carpet in all of our living spaces replaced with bamboo flooring and oh. my. word. what a difference that made!  I mean, really, why on Earth anyone would think WHITE carpet is a good idea in a dining room is beyond me.  Maybe it was an 80’s thing?  Two things that should never come back in style – white, plush wall to wall carpet and parachute pants – the end.

We chose to leave the carpet in the bedrooms until we could decide whether or not to replace it with more bamboo or new carpet.  After lots of thought, we decided we like having carpet in our bedrooms, and new carpet would be easier on the wallet.  We gathered lots of samples and estimates.

We checked them in the rooms the same way we check paint samples – in the morning, the afternoon and at night.  I’m really happy with what we ended up going with, but to be totally honest, I’m mainly just glad to get rid of that old nasty 20 plus year old carpet with the funk of forty thousand years.  It. was. gross!

Believe me when I say it looked nastier in person than it looks in pictures.  The carpet we ended up going with isn’t either of the above samples that we had originally narrowed it down to; we went with (in all 4 bedrooms) nylon berber made by Mohawk (Jamboree II in exotic gold).  We used a local carpet installer (Rodgers Decor & More in Versailles) rather than a big box store because they had the best price for what we wanted, and a friend we trust recommended them.  This was not a job I would ever want to DIY.  Mainly because what took them 7 hours would have taken me and my hub probably 7 months!  The cost of labor was worth it to have it over and done so quickly.

I wanted something that looked like a natural fiber (which was also something we looked into) but was also very soft underfoot.  In addition I also wanted something with color variation to help hide any dirt. Personally I prefer a low pile so that helped to narrow down the selection.

We chose nylon over wool for price reasons.  Wool is the best, but it can be very expensive.  Our bedrooms are pretty low traffic areas.  We’ve had berber before (in our 3rd house) and been very happy.  My best advice for choosing new carpet is to do your homework and get lots of estimates.  There are pros and cons to all carpet materials and styles, so you really just have to decide what will work for your family and your budget.  The one major con most people have against berber is that is can snag.  For us, this wasn’t a huge concern because our dogs stay out of the bedrooms and again these are low traffic areas.

Having new carpet installed made such a huge difference in all of the bedrooms.  It just looks so CLEAN!  Here’s a picture of my girl’s room (looking like a hot mess) with the old carpet.  I realize it’s not the carpets fault that it looks like her bedroom imploded but for before and after purposes let’s just roll with this.

Here’s how it looks now.

Her walls finally got painted too!  (Olympic – Moonstone)  Our painter friend did it when he painted our master bathroom and bedroom.  It was just a little extra, and I’m so glad to finally have that done.  Now I can get on to the fun parts of this room design, like giving this thrifted chair a makeover.