Grounding the living room

 

I could mean two things here:

“bad room, bad, you’re grounded for a month.”

or

“anchoring the room with a common shape to define an area”

I’ll let you figure that one out. Several months ago we started noticing sand all over the house. Being limited beach goers, we were puzzled as to how so much sand could keep reappearing in our house. The culprit: our rug. Well I say “ours” but it’s actually our landlords. Turns out cheapo office rugs from Wal-Mart or the like deteriorate after time. Sand and dust and who knows what else will leak out. So we threw the rug in the garage and we’ve enjoyed admiring the pretty hardwoods. 

My mild annoyance for lack of rug has slowly turned into a crazed desperate need for a rug since our house is so open. It feels like a whole bunch of furniture floating into space. I started pricing rugs. YIKES. Rugs are one of the most expensive things in home décor. You pay 800 dollars plus for an 8x10 and then YOU WALK ON IT!!! It’s like walking on a new camera or something. A better cheaper solution needed to be found.

Project paint-a-drop cloth began formulating in my mind as I over eagerly ran through the endless options available to me. With the power to paint my own design, I could use colors to my own specifications painted on a inexpensive drop cloth. Newfound joy and a little bit of evil-excited- cackling for my newfound plan quickly turned into fear. SO many designs, so many colors, how was I to choose one???

I gave myself some rules to abide by while I searched endless pictures of inspiration online.

1. Step back and analyze your style. I find that I get thrown in all different directions on the internet. While searching for something very specifically and quickly eliminating things that catch my eye but aren’t the right style, I keep myself from contemplating too long on the wrong thing. Like for instance, this rug is really pretty. I like it because it’s artistic and eye catching. but it doesn’t fall in line with my hierarchy of design.  It gets a whopping elimination **zap**

 

 

2. Write out the needs of the room.

Our living room needs were:

a. big 8x 10 ( I measured using blue tape on the floor.)

b. neutral, that ties in a bold painting

c. minimalistic and unassuming ( I don’t want the rug to be the focal point of the room).

d. Easy to clean.

e. geometric- we have a lot of organic shapes in the room already, the cloud, curves on the coffee table, curved back sofa, floral pillow. I want to steer the room back in the direction of LINE. Line is the focal element of mid century modern and minimalist design.

3. keep it easy. Sure I would gladly tackle something complicated, I’m a painter…but intricate isn’t the look I want. I also need it to be a  project that I can finish quickly or it will have to stay on the floor in an unfinished state.

So here’s what I’ve come up with  so far. Triangles in beige and mustard. I put in in Photoshop with the art that’s downstairs to see how it does. I’m going to stare at it for a little while and see if I still like it later. I really wanted something gray but the mustard color looks really good on our hardwood and picks up that little smidge of mustard in the painting and in our floral pillow. It might not be the look I would have for our living room if I started from scratch, but I am trying to work with what we already have. Any thoughts? I will be putting up the rug how to and results soon.