Shopowners' design disasters: floor coverings

So you'd think two people who own a home accessories shop would be able to ace their own choices in things like paint and floor coverings. I'm here to confess that it doesn't always happen that way. When it comes to your own choices, it's different. You're too close to it, maybe. We've learned the hard way on several issues.

First, carpet. When we moved into our house, the carpet was more than ready to be replaced. It was icky beige, standard-issue builder's carpet. It's cheap. It's non-committal, it's one-size-fits-none.

After we moved in, the carpet was further sullied by an unfortunate series of dog-related accidents. Dog went on medication and we thought it was safe to shop for new carpet. Our preference would have been to put in hardwood floors, but we just couldn't afford it. Mistake Numero Uno! It's never good to settle for a cheap substitute for what you really want. This is not to recommend that you overextend yourself, or overdo it for what's appropriate in the space, or not make some compromises towards a good solution.

Let's compare this to, say, buying a coat. You see one at a discount center, marked down to $50 from $150 (supposedly). You try it on, no one helps you because they don't do that, you buy it because it's 'okay' and wow, it's cheap. You wear it for a few weeks and decide that it doesn't really go with anything... and then your husband tells you how nicely it accentuates your butt. I'm just makin' this stuff up (but it happens!). You repeat the process, buying another coat at some impersonal discount box where you have to dig through racks of random stuff (and my god, they light the place with cheap fluorescent tubes): another compromise because you think you'll just make it work. Then you go downtown to one of our great little boutiques and see "It" – the cutest coat you've found, in just the color you want. The staff there helps you find the perfect size and fit and you feel like a million bucks. But you've already spent $130 on coats, and now, since you've found what you really want, should you spend another $100+ or so? Can't answer that, but I can say: you should have waited, and just spent that money once. Sigh.

So it goes with floor coverings, too. We felt we couldn't stretch for the hardwood floors, so we bought more carpet. We didn't want it too dark. Didn't want beige. Didn't want it too 'flecky' or shaggy. Took home a bunch of little samples and looked at them against the paint color and furniture; studied them during different times of the day for the effect of light and color. Remember, we know what we're doing with this stuff. We've done it before. We ended up with kind of a pale stoney mushroom {not beige}. None of that weird pinky/peach overcast. But when the guys came to install it, they kind of tsk tsked and raised their eyebrows when they rolled it out. It was white. A white (okay, maybe just off-white) carpet in a household with two black and white dogs. "Do you have little kids, too?" they asked. No? Well, that's good, anyway. Maybe there was some hope for the carpet.

Things always look different when seen in great quantity. We know that! Carpet often looks lighter than you imagined, and paint color usually ends up looking darker than you thought. A little piece of busy fabric gets much busier when you cover an eight-foot sofa with it (not that ever I've done that!). This is Design School 101 stuff, and we ignored it in our own house.

It was gorgeous, however. It was the perfect contrast to furnishing and walls, and we reveled in its luxurious comfort on our bare feet, and in the way it lightened and brightened up the whole downstairs. We reveled for a few days, maybe a few weeks. Then Weasel the dog (true, it's her name: I had nothing to do with it) began having urinary issues again. More meds, more pee, off and on for months, until it was determined that she needed a $2,000 operation. Right now. Okie dokie!

Weasie was cured (well, the bladder stone problem is gone, but she's old and creaky and half-blind and slightly psychotic -- nothing to be done for all that). We cleaned the carpet, again and again, but it just wasn't going to work. So we started shopping for hardwood floors, aided by offers of 12-month financing with zero interest.

There are a lot of options out there, as you know if you've done any looking. Of course, what we love is vintage, reclaimed flooring... but that can be an expensive proposition. There was a bit of oak flooring in our kitchen, which clashed with the alder cabinetry. What were they thinking? The oak goes kind of yellow; against it, the alder casts a peachy tinge. So the oak had to go (plus we wanted more continuity in our smallish footprint – it was odd how the flooring was all dissected). We wanted something more environmentally friendly, and ended up with bamboo. I like the long grain bamboo, where you get some of the character of the wood, but not the roundish bits you get when it's cut in cross-section. This flooring is stained a deep espresso, with striations of nearly black. It's lovely and dramatic. And very dark. I really love it, but those two dogs we have? Shedding all over the place. And you know how the dust in Central Oregon is ferocious and ever-present? We forgot about that. The dust settles on the floor (even half an hour after we vacuum!) and you can see every fleck of it.

What's the answer? Get dust-colored, dog-colored flooring unless you're the kind who likes to vacuum every day.

Designers, shop owners: what kinds of boo boos have you made in your own homes? I know it's hard to fess up to any of this, but it's fun to hear about it. Besides, hardly anybody will actually see it...