How I Learned to Rely on Samples

When we bought our first home 2 and a half years ago we had no idea what we were doing. We had a teeny tiny budget and a teeny tiny baby. Well, at six months old she wasn’t that teeny but good lord is she not teeny tiny now so when I think back my memories make her seem so small. Now she’s practically a teenager, but I’m getting of track.

Like I said we didn’t know what we were doing and we didn’t have a lot of money to do it. We made the choice to put our little “home improvement” budget towards paint. Lots of paint. Aside from the interior of our closets there isn’t a white wall in this place. We also put some money towards replacing the hideous drawer and cupboard pulls in the kitchen. Then we splurged a bit on some very affordable furniture. A lady needs a bedroom set that matches and a kitchen table that doesn’t wobble when she cuts her steak. We were lucky to find good deals on all these things, remember I said we had a small budget.

We did not rip out the terrible carpet and replace it. Now friends, I am not a snobby prissy girl. I am not bothered by a bit of wear a tear, but my home was built 10 years ago and fitted with mediocre builder grade carpet. Somewhere in the 8 years this house exsisited before we bought it someone mishandled this carpet in a dog pee, large spill spots and stains sort of way. This carpet is bad.

Upon buying the home we had the carpets professionally cleaned and hoped that in the following months we would be able to save up enough money to buy some flooring and ditch this once cream colored but now practically gray carpet. Wel,l life happened and  2 and a half years later we still have the same carpet covering our floors taunting me every time I let myself look down.

This last weekend Luke and I decided to do some floor shopping, for researching and pricing purposes.

We ended up leaving the store we were supposed to be researching and pricing at having bought beautiful, warm, rich colored wood floors. Of course we had looked into wood some before this trip to the store so we didn’t go into our purchase blindly but it wasn’t our plan to leave the store with a lot less money in our pockets that same day.

I love this wood. Luke loves this wood. We found a shade and a wood in our price range that we both loved so we pulled the trigger.

Saturday afternoon we got home and I set the sample we had taken from the store to help with our tile shopping on our kitchen table. When I looked down I gasped.

It is pretty obvious we love the shade of wood we chose, because it is already ALL over our house. While shopping it never once occured to me that I was drawn to a wood floor that matched my kitchen table.

Side tables.

Bed room set.

This is why people bring these samples home before buying enough wood floor to to fill their home.

The good news is we were already planning on buying some area rugs and we still love the wood floors we picked out as well as all of our furniture. Actually, with you the floors are lighter than all the furniture but close enough I had to tell you. I mean what good are these stories if I don’t tell you about them so you can make fun of me.

Next time we go shopping for anything home related will someone please remind me that we have enough dark woods and brown tones in our home? I wouldn’t want to go over board or anything.