Rugs Of Doom

We love Tibetan rugs. They're sumptuous and thick and artsy-craftsy and they must be tasteful, because they cost a billion dollars. Twenty years ago we bought one for the piano room. We probably should have gotten the larger size, but we only had a half billion in our pants at the time.

Piano room, living room, dining room: they're all small and right next to each other, and Dave, who splurges once every forty years (so far) thought we should get Tibetans for all three. Horrible idea! All those colors and designs jumbled together! Chaos! Plus if we got a patterned rug for the living room we'd have to reupholster the furniture. I thought maybe we could get one for the dining room, though. So I went online to see if I could find something affordable.

Yes! I found a rich rosy-red rug with green in the border to match our dark green wallpaper. It looked fabulous in the thumbnail picture on the website. Kind of spendy, so it had to be good. When it arrived, it was duly stunning! Stunning-ish. Vibrant colors, but a little on the thin side. Kind of a sparse design, once you see it full size. But hey! It was shipped and paid for and I decided to love it. It was good! It was good enough.

Kind of.  I mean, jeez, there are those little threads that keep poking out, and it looks a little shreddy, and it won't stay vacuumed for five seconds. But it's fine. Just fine.

Kind of. But then I saw an ad for new Tibetan rugs in town that were practically half price almost. Still expensive of course. But half price! Almost! I told Dave maybe we could just take a little look-see. No charge for looking.

Man, that there is a beautiful rug. And it only costs another fifth more than the rug we already bought that is really kind of shreddy.  Can't justify replacing  that rug though, unless--I know! We can put it in the TV room where nothing is ever clean anyway! That way we won't have wasted the Thin Shreddy But Expensive Red Rug.

"You can always take this rug for a test drive in your home," the rug pusher lady said.

"I could see if it works with the green wallpaper," I said. "I mean, I doubt it, but it might. I certainly am not about to scrape off wallpaper and repaint."

No way it was going to work with the green wallpaper, which I am in no mood to scrape off. I haven't painted a room in this house for twenty years, when I painted all of them, so one could make the case they needed a little freshening up, but that's not the case I was planning to make. I was planning to make the case that any wear and tear would coincide with my own failing eyesight and enhanced ability to not give a shit, and the rooms could remain as is until they finally hauled me out the front door on a gurney, and the new owners could waltz in with a sprayer and a vat of Eggshell White and have a ball. That was my plan.

"You could try it out," the rug lady said again. Well, we could. That doesn't cost anything. So we did.

Rats! Rats! I LOVE the new rug. And it totally doesn't work with the wallpaper, at all. But I could take the wallpaper down and repaint. It would totally be worth it.

"What was your plan for the red rug again?" Dave wanted to know. "Because we could put it in the living room just for now."

It sounded chaotic, but after all, we had the rug already.

"Shoot, might as well try it," I said. "Just for now." His ideas are not always horrible.

We tried it. It looked amazingly not horrible. And besides that, it was now obvious that we really needed a rug in that room. It was way better than the bare floor. Maybe not that exact rug, although it was truly amazingly not horrible. But a different rug. I consulted the rug pusher lady again. We found a good possibility. It was in a warehouse in New Jersey, but maybe they had a deal. Maybe it had a minor flaw and it would be less expensive.

Good news! It did have a flaw and it was less expensive. Not less expensive than the mail-order rug, or the rug I just bought, or any rug I ever contemplated buying ever in my life, but way less expensive than it would have been without a flaw. It was practically a steal. For that kind of rug. I mean, it's just money, right? Just something we'd have wasted on nursing care down the road or something.

Of course, we'd have to have our furniture reupholstered. The green worked with the green wallpaper that has to come down, but it probably doesn't work with the new rug that we might be buying in place of the red rug that will go in the TV room that needs to be repainted. The living room will have to be repainted too. We should probably spring for an arts-and-crafts light fixture in the dining room.

Of  course, if we do paint the living room and dining room, and we leave the door open to the stairs, the color in the stairwell carpeting will look a little weird. And that color goes all the way upstairs to the landing and the wall-to-wall matches it and sort of determines all the other wall colors, furnishings, and quilts I've made over the years.

"Shut the door," said Dave, whose ideas are not always horrible.