The Argonne rug from Home Decorator’s won the battle of the rugs competition. It was actually a pretty tough decision. I originally had my eye on the rug from West Elm, but after visiting Home Decorator’s and seeing the Argonne rug in person, I decided it was a better fit. Both rugs are wool, so they’re relatively thin and not the softest thing you’ve ever felt. But for the office, I thought a thinner rug would be better because of the rolling chair. Maybe if our desk chair didn’t have wheels I would have gone for something a little more plushy.
The color of the rug is actually quite a bit different than the picture shown on Home Decorator’s website. The rug is a pretty mustard color, and not such a harsh, saturated yellow. I only ran into one problem when I got the rug…the size. A 4×6 rug would have been too small, so I ordered the 5×8. Well I forgot that the office is exactly 8 feet wide, so the rug went from wall to wall and almost curled up on the molding. The last rug was a 5×7, which fit perfectly.
So I turned it the other direction…
Which to me, is only okay. I don’t hate it, but I’m not in love with it. I thought about returning the rug, but the West Elm rug [and just about any rug I looked at] went from the 4×6 size to the 5×8. Notice how the desk’s legs are just barely on the rug? That’s what bothers me the most about it. Other than that, I like how the rug extends a good portion of the length of the small 8×11.5 office. I’m going to try and hang up those frames you seeing propped up against the wall this weekend. I have to find one more frame for a third print, that way I can cluster the frames. The left [larger] frame was originally black and the right [smaller] one was originally wood. Spray paint does wonders.
And here’s a view of the back corner of the office [I’m standing by the desk.] I like how the rug goes under the chair’s leg, I feel like it makes the room seem more like a whole rather than a bunch of miscellaneous items thrown together [because that’s what it looks like right now.]
After I got the rug into place and took a picture, it made me excited to re-upholster that chair. [Right now, it’s Ferrah’s favorite hang out/nap place.] So I whipped out the fabric I bought to re-upholster the chair and thew it over to get a better idea of how it will look.
That made me even more excited, and confirmed my choice on the rug even more. The West Elm rug would have been too busy and competing with the chair’s [hopefully soon] new fabric. For me, it’s just the right amount of mixing patterns. Right now everything on the chair is connected, but I plan on covering the main part of it in a white, textured fabric and then have a back and a seat cushion made of the blue, patterned fabric.
I’m also thinking about hanging some sort of pendant from the ceiling over the chair to use as a focal point in the corner. It doesn’t have to be a light pendant [though I think there is an outlet behind the bookcase], but just something that dresses up the corner a bit more. Maybe a tiered pendant of some sort. I’d rather not hang frames on the wall behind it. We’ll have the big world map on the opposing wall taking up a lot of space already.
Speaking of the world map, it’s a lot bigger than we originally were going to get. The map itself is 50×32 inches, and it will be bigger once the custom framing is done. Tim and his dad are making the frame from some basic molding found at hardware stores. Since we plan on putting flag pins in the map for travels [past and hopefully future] I mounted cork board on top of foam core board, and then spray mounted the map onto the cork. We found the map at the Border’s down the street and picked up a map of just the United States while we were at it.
And that’s the office thus far.
—m.