We have been ironing out details of our downstairs renovation over the past two weeks. Lowe’s jumped on board to sponsor a lot of the big construction components we have planned and one of their corporate partners, Stainmaster carpet, was eager to work with us, too after hearing about our plans to carpet the whole thing. We are going to rock the wall to wall carpet so good. Before I go any further, we are beyond grateful to these companies that really let us stretch ourselves and still have 100% control over our decisions. The carpet in our downstairs (and on the stairs) has been in bad shape since we moved in. We had it professionally cleaned twice and it just looks tired and stained. I don’t even like thinking about how long it has been in the house (ew). Initially, we thought about doing the same tile downstairs as we have upstairs, at least in part of the space, we even saved some all this time thinking we would! But, then when we started thinking about it and planning the space out, it just didn’t make sense to have the wood tile down there for us. Our heating ducts run through the flooring upstairs (ceiling down) so it creates this automatic heated floor situation that would be sorely missed downstairs. Then we talked about maybe putting a cork floor on just the playroom side to keep cleanup easier. These were all ideas Lowe’s was on board with, but we just couldn’t get 100% excited about. In the end, we just want it to be a comfortable, cozy space and carpeting the whole thing actually excites us and I think if done right, it can look really amazing.

Here are three spaces that inspired our wall-to-wall carpet downstairs:

While some of these might be a natural source, like sisal, (which isn’t the coziest underfoot) the biggest takeaway for me is the texture. Some sort of low-piled, patterned rug was what I had my sights set on. We went to Lowe’s and checked out all of the options. Chris was thorough in his testing (haha!):

While the high piles were so nice and soft, we were pleasantly surprised Stainmaster had a lot of great, tight patterned carpets for active families and pets! Bingo! That’s us! That’s us! We checked out four different ones to bring home and look at in place.

After some time, we narrowed in on the Medford style which is a highly stain resistant rug for active areas, but is still very soft. The small checked pattern reminded me a lot of our inspiration photos. It has a very modern, traditional vibe to it, too, which is right where we like to sit.

The only issue was choosing a color from a small 1×2 sample card practically had me paralyzed. The area we’ll be carpeting is approximately 1500 sq feet and I really really wanted to make sure we chose the right color. I ran back down to Lowe’s to check out the display board which had much larger samples and Chris came home for a late lunch (btw, he only works a mile away, so it’s quick for him to come home when he wants to–we’ve been getting questions about that lately) so we could try to come to a decision while the sun was still shining.

To start, we each put pieces of post it notes on samples that we like. Any and all. There were a lot of darks and lights and warms and cools at the beginning. Then we started, one at a time, taking turns removing post its until we were left with one that we both liked: Fizz. 

Perhaps something in the 4th column could pass for a natural fiber wall to wall option, but I’m really glad about the option we land on. I even think it will look sleek going down our stairs!

We are hopefully having someone come measure for install next week (which means I still have a few days to stew over the color. Just kidding! …not really) and then we’ll start tearing out the old stuff and have everything painted and the recessed lights in before the new carpet is installed. See you on the flip side, Fizz!

Proud to be partnering with Lowe’s and Stainmaster on this project–and happy to be taking you along for the ride! Thanks for supporting our sponsors who support us. Inspiration image sources:1, 2, 3