Getting Carpet Was Like Discovering a Hidden Room in Our House

This post was sponsored by Lowe’s. Thank you for allowing us to share about the brands we use and love during our home renovation process.

We received some pretty exciting news a few weeks ago: Our special order carpet that we thought wouldn’t arrive/get installed until mid-November was going to be installed mid-October. And we learned pretty quickly how flooring completely changes the function of a room.

The family room walls were thick, yellow texture when we moved in. I still desperately want to cover the texture but painting it a light gray in January helped distract from the 3-D nature a bit. Another eye-sore with the room was the red, rotting linoleum with a printed terra-cotta tile pattern. It was not convincing in case you were wondering. The areas by the doorways had been worn down to the subfloor.

We first assumed that we could just remove the linoleum and refinish the floors underneath. The wide plank subfloor could look pretty cool painted or refinished somehow. What we didn’t think about what how this room was originally a butler’s pantry that had been expanded (possibly in the 40s?) into an extra main floor living space with an addition. That’s why they textured over the walls and that’s why they laid down linoleum—to cover up the change in materials. The subfloor on the side of the room original to the house is wood. The subfloor on the east side of the room is some kind of fibrous material. Painting or refinishing of any kind wasn’t going to be possible. Austin, Austin’s dad and my step-dad covered the mismatched floor with new subfloor to give us a clean slate, no matter what we decided to do.

I’ve never been much for carpet—some carpets give me the heebie-jeebies. But the more we thought about it and thought about the functionality of this space, the more carpet made sense in our house. We didn’t want to do laminate that would meet up right next to the original hardwoods and we didn’t want to tile a place that our future kiddos would play in. Carpet is just cozy and it works for a family room.

We didn’t have to search much before finding the perfect carpet for our space. We were grabbing tile for our kitchen one night and decided to stop on our way to the registers to look at the carpet options on display. I was more interested in the monochrome textured options and Austin was more interested in the multi-flecked berber options. Since it was the first time we had browsed, we weren’t stressed that we weren’t agreeing on the choices so we were just going to head out with our tile. And then we saw a super soft neutral grey and both immediately loved it. It was Stainmaster TruSoft carpet in Cavern. We talked to the Lowe’s team member working in flooring that night and arranged for a measurement of our room to get the process rolling.

The subfloored family room had never had real furniture moved into it until this month. Instead, it has been a revolving space for laundry appliances, kitchen appliances, cutting drywall, storing kitchen cabinets, refinishing furniture and the place where we dumped our tools at the end of the day. Not a place to watch a movie. It worked really well for us to have such a large space like this in our house during our intensive projects. It would have been so much harder to get the kitchen done if we didn’t have a place to grab tools nearby but out of the way and keep the large pieces that would have made living in a renovation just a little less fun if they had to be stored in the finished areas of the house.

yikes, right?

Back to the carpet. The measurements happened 2 days after we talked to the guy at Lowe’s which was awesome. The contractor gave us two options of how the carpet could be cut. We chose the option with the least amount of waste which also made it the cheaper one. A few days after that, Lowe’s called us with the final cost and we placed the order. I called to see how soon the carpet would be installed. I was completely unaware that we had chosen a special order product. We were bummed when they said it would be mid-November. Being due with our daughter in mid-November and just wanting projects to wrap up, it wasn’t ideal. But we were still excited about the soft touch and soft color of the carpet so it was going to be worth the wait.

The first week of October, I received a call that the sectional we had planned was coming in early. It had been transported from Canada so there was no way to ask them to hold onto it for us. Our family room was still full of appliances and odds and ends from the ongoing kitchen project. Since we had finished spraying the cabinets, we were able to tear down the plastic walls in the basement and start to move things out of the family room to where they actually belonged. The day after I found out we were getting the sectional early, I received a call asking if October 12th would be a good day for the carpet to get installed. I WAS SO HAPPY. The sectional arrived on October 4th when things were still in transition from the kitchen so it just got kind of sat on top of the subfloor. We continued to work that next week with the help of our family to clear out the room and get it prepped for carpet.

The day of the carpet installation felt magical. It was one project that we didn’t have to get tools for, get help with or learn through the process. We purchased the carpet along with the pad and installation so everything would be taken care of. The contractor got here right on time and instantly got to work laying tack strips and padding and then cutting and fusing the carpet. In three hours our empty shell of a room had flooring. And it looked and felt beautiful. The installer left at 3pm. By 3:30, our sectional was back in the family room and set up the way we were going to use it. By 4:00, we had a television in the back of our car (we hadn’t had one for almost a year but there also hasn’t been time to watch anything with all our projects). Apparently waiting any longer without a comfy place to host and unwind was not reasonable.

The shelves were still full of tools and odds and ends for a few days but within a week, it was a cozy, finished space to work and rest. Someday I’ll get to see these walls refinished or covered up, but having our carpet has changed the way we use our home and that’s kind of incredible.

P.S. They’re having a special right now where if you purchase a measurement by 11/16, it’ll be installed before Christmas. Plus, free full home installation. So yeah, it’s a pretty great thing.

SOURCES

Stainmaster TruSoft Carpet in Cavern from Lowe’s