The carpet made us uneasy.  When we moved into this home last year it was very dirty. We had to wear shoes in the house for a long time. Even after I washed the laminate wood floors several times, the bottoms of our feet were still black.  It took a solid two weeks of scrubbing the floor daily before they looked clean and  we felt our feet were safe to walk around bare.  Carpet is a different story.  I can’t wash carpet every day.  Sure, I vacuumed a lot but there’s always the looming feeling that someone else’s dogs were romping around in this room.  And kids.  And who knows what else could be laying in the fibers of this high pile carpet.  So, not only did we want to change the carpet–we felt we needed to.  When we ripped up the old carpet, we found a whole lot of sand underneath:

Why so much dirt?!  Gross. Gross. Gross. We yanked it up and cleared all the debris and yesterday, we got brand new carpet and a new luxe pad.  At least that is what we paid for. I mentioned here that while Chris had final say on the couch, I chose the carpet.  Chris was insistent on getting the nicest carpet pad available.  The 10# Healthier Choice Eco Memory Foam Carpet pad.  It was luxe and expensive, but he wanted to make sure this family room was as comfortable as possible–so we splurged.

And then as I was looking through pictures to write this post, I noticed we didn’t get the 10# pad we paid double for.  We got an 8# pad:

It’s the same carpet we got in Greta’s room last year, Martha Stewart’s line at Home Depot.  The pattern is the Winterthur pattern.  Simple diamond texture in a deep color called “Brook Trout.”

It plays nice with the paint color (also Martha…go figure), but we can’t wait to get tall, simple baseboards like the ones we installed in our guest room to define the two even more.  And I’ll definitely be breaking out the paint again this weekend to touch up all the spots that got scratch during the process.

While the underside of the carpet is rough enough to scratch lots of paint of our walls, the top of the carpet is beyond soft.  After it was in, I thought for sure Chris was gonna nap right there:

I was set on Martha’s Winterthur line almost imediately, although I did gather a few other samples to consider.  The carpet has a lifetime stain and soil warranty, a 20-year texture retention warranty, and a
20-year abrasive wear warranty.  So it is as practical as beautiful in my opinion.  Deciding on a color took a little more thought.  We have the second color from the left on top in Greta’s room.  “Potter’s Clay.”  But we wanted something significantly darker for this room.  We quickly ruled out all of them except Brook Trout (which we ended up going with) and Wild Turkey (second from the right on the top):

Both had a great balance between brown and gray, but in the end, Wild Turkey was too close to our previous carpet color and not as moody as we were looking for.  Brook Trout won.  And we both agree it was the best choice for the space.  I would say Greta (no clue what happened to her hair or pants) agrees, too:

What can I say–the girl gets excited about carpet.  The carpet was a big chunk of our budget, but worth every penny.  This receipt shows the 10 # pad: