New Carpet

The search for the perfect carpet continues. We are weary of the task, but we will stick to it until we are finished. At first I was adamant that the carpet be ivory. Kara and Matt agreed with me. Nice ivory carpet makes a home look elegant and it lightens up a room even in the dead of night. What's not to like? How easy it stains! Kara and Matt's previous home and our old home both had very light colored carpet that was in good shape when we moved out of our homes. However, when we moved into this house the ivory carpet had hundreds of stains on it and it was only five years old. During the day most of the stains are not very visible, but when overhead lights go on in the evening it is frightening. At least for me. Over the last four years, we've added more stains to the carpet. It's ugly.

Nonetheless we started out looking at only ivory carpets. We kept the light colored carpets in our first homes clean. We should be able to do it in our new home we reasoned. We looked at cut and loop carpets with patterns. It's what is currently in the house and we all love it except for the stains. We checked out lots of carpet samples. Mark and Kara conducted stain experiments on the samples. Despite their stain resistance ratings the carpets didn't do as well as we would have liked. Both the blueberries and catsup left visible stains on the carpet samples. ARG! Five children are going to make a few messes on the carpet. Maybe ivory wouldn't work?

After some serious thinking, we changed our criteria from ivory cut and loop carpet to a tan multi-color frieze carpet. We had to start over looking at different carpet samples. We found one at Lowe's we thought would work and had their estimator come to our house and measure. They gave us a quote. I was rather surprised at the amount of overage the installer decided was needed to carpet the house--20% more carpet than pad. We decided to get a second quote from a local dealer. His estimator gave us a quote with very little wastage. I think his numbers are a little too tight. (Do I sound like Goldilocks? Too much! Too little!) Wednesday evening our third carpet guy visited, an estimator who works for Costco. After we get his numbers we will have to decide who to buy from and which carpet we like best. Every company has different carpets samples, but the local dealer and the Costco agent said they could get us any Smartstrand that was currently available even if it wasn't in their sample books.

Carpet laying is supposed to go much more quickly than painting. I sure hope so. I'm tired of all the chaos, but the end results will be worth it.