Bonus Indulgence - Pictures in The Long and Winding Road

I mentioned that I used a small portion of my bonus to indulge in a new dining room rug, table runner, and candle centerpiece. I loved the old dining room rug – it was bright and vibrant, adding cheerful color and a happy ambiance to the room. Using such vivid color was new for me, having almost always favored earth tones. It was part of adding more color to every area of my condo. But, over the last 4 years, it’s started to feel a little old. I’m happy I did it, and I’m not getting rid of ALL color, but I miss the earth tones that I am naturally drawn to.

The dining room rug had to be replaced one way or another. Gracie had chewed it up, pulled lots of threads loose to the point where there were bare spots, and it is the kind of rug that somehow eats itself from the edges, so that along the edges where were parts where the threads were completely gone and all you saw was the brown underlayment. I think I read that it’s little mites that are attracted to that particular type rug and they eat away at it. And the rug just looked dirty.

So while looking for some pictures to be part of the before and after, I thought I’d start at the very beginning. So here is what the dining room floor looked like when I bought the place, before I got a rug for the dining room. Long time readers will remember the dining room, kitchen and hallway had a horrible old white tile floor. It doesn’t look nearly as bad in pictures as it did in person – it was about 30 years old, yellowed, with such filthy grout that it wouldn’t come clean. There were chips and cracks in it. It was awful. And it was cold too.

And then I added the rug:

Then I had the big leak in the kitchen and mercifully, it resulted in being able to replace the tile floor almost for free – insurance paid to replace all the tile, and I paid to have the hardwood floor continue into the hallway that led to the front door, which meant having to have the old parquet floor lifted up. How I LOVED (and still love) the new flooring.

And so now, it’s out with the bright vibrant worn out rug, and in with a taupe colored rug with a cream colored contemporary design on it. It’s a little bigger than the old one was, so it just about goes wall to wall in the dining room. I really could not be happier with it.

It’s impossible to take a picture around here without at least one, if not both, dogs managing to get in it:

For now, I’m having to leave heavy items along the edge of the rug until it lays flat and stops wanting to curl back up.

So while I was at it, I decided to get a new table runner, and centerpiece candle set. Lately I’ve been looking around the kitchen and dining room, trying to figure out why it had started to feel cluttered and just not as nice as it used to feel. I realized it was because I had started to let things accumulate on the dining room table, with my purse and laptop bag hanging off one of the chairs. Well, I took care of that. I am super happy with the cleaned up look:

So that’s my latest home update project. There isn’t much more for me to do, now that the bathroom is finally done. Once the weather warms up (assuming it ever does) I will plant flowers out on the balcony and have the annual balcony reno, when it becomes like an added room for me so I’m sure pictures will be coming then. Until then, this is it. I have to get busy cleaning up around here, so I’ll write a “real” entry later in the weekend. Have a good one, everyone!