the great debate

Hi friends!

I am just about halfway through my work week. Like I said yesterday, aren’t short weeks the best!?!

My favorite holiday is quickly approaching so be sure to check back here tomorrow for my last post for this week and my thoughts on Thanksgiving.

We have plans to spend a cozy evening with Mark’s parents, sister, and family on Thursday night. Their Thanksgiving meal never disappoints. Friday morning we will be up bright and early with a cleared out living room, entry, and kitchen all prepped for demolition!

I’ve mentioned it a few times already, but we recently decided to replace our flooring in about half of the house. Our house was built in 1960 and has been renovated (poorly) a few times already. We’ve already taken a sledgehammer to the kitchen, but this time we are ripping out floor tile in our entry and kitchen/breakfast room area as well as taking up the carpet in our living room. We have decided to go with a wood laminate flooring over hardwood for many reasons:

-ease of install

-wear and tear that comes from dog claws, to be specific

-rate of return in our specific neighborhood

-cost of product in relation to the possibility of future rental

We aren’t prepared to tackle this project completely by ourselves so we opted to hire out for the demolition (the hard part) and we will be installing the flooring ourselves (the easy part-we hope). I am personally hoping to be done by the end of the weekend, but it’s going to be  a lot of hard work!

We also plan to replace all of the base trim in the house, but we will start with the areas that are getting the new flooring and pace ourselves from that point. We are going to do something tall and simple, something a little craftsman-like similar to this (but maybe not that tall):

...and similar to what we had in our apartment:

SO that’s what we will be up to this weekend!

Anyway, with new floors come new rugs, am I right? I have rugs under my kitchen table and living room furniture right now to simply define the space, but I think we will need them for sound control and slippery floors after we make the flooring switch.

Here's the house as of this summer when I did my one year recap:

living room looking into breakfast room

living room looking into entry

kitchen and breakfast room

I’m really liking the idea of a jute rug and also the cowhide rug, but I need your help! Should I replace both the kitchen rug as well as the living room rug? I’ve done my research and here is what I’ve come up with:

my case for a cow hide rug

I love a cow hide rug. It would add a little bit of an eclectic vibe (which I love) and also a tiny nod to Texas, all in our little bitty living room! I think I would definitely choose to use this in the living room instead of the kitchen. 

I've seen these on craigslist and Ikea for the best prices...any other tips on where to score a nice one? Maybe Overstock?

my case for a jute rug

I also realllllly like the jute rug. I think this would be a nice contrast against our floors and sofa in the living room, but I could also see it in the kitchen.

my case for a layered look

Or what about a layered look?  I see this everywhere-it’s obviously quite a trend!

What are your thoughts? Should I spring for it and do both rugs or should I pace myself and just do one for now? Thanks in advance!