A New Rug and Old Chairs

I made some big updates recently to the kitchen, more specifically our every day dining area.  I have longed for a new rug, one that would actually fit this space, forever.  I was also over our leather chairs.  Don’t get me wrong, they were nice Room & Board chairs, but they were totally showing their age (just look how I have extended the life of one of them).  This was the before:

And, here is the after:

I am head over heals in love with the transformations.  The updates are not only beautiful, but also super functional.  Let’s start with the rug saga…

This little breakfast nook area of our kitchen is perfectly square.  Our table is rectangular, but with four chairs on the sides the seating group is pretty much a square.  Most rugs are rectangular.  We lived with the rectangular one in the before shot for over a year and it drove me nuts.  It was a 5 x 8 rug, so it barely extended 12″ on each side of the table.  The recommended clearance for pulling out a chair is 18-24″ of rug.  In case the chairs slipped off the edge of the rug, which they did daily, we had to keep the felt pads on the feet.  The felt protected the floors, but prevented the chairs from sliding on the rug.

I had eyed Flor tiles for this space for a while.  Makes sense, because a bunch of square tiles could easily make up a big square rug.  We have a set of four, from CB2, that we use as our entry rug and love.  I just wasn’t seeing the right color or pattern for the space.  But, recently I realized they added some new colors to their Lasting Grateness pattern.  The titanium grey immediately caught my eye.  Then, I did what I do best… I delayed.  Should I order a sample…la la la.  I signed up for Flor emails and within a few hours they sent me a code for 15% off.  Sold!  I pounced and ordered my new rug, skipping the samples and going straight for the goods.  The whole rug cost just over $200 after the discount.

I moved the table and chairs to lay out my new carpet tiles.  I played around with the tiles a bit to find a pattern I liked.  The pattern is random and the tiles do not line up, but I noticed there were a few tiles that were very similar that I tried to spread out in the design.  After a few minutes I came up with this:

Hallelujah for a square rug for a square room!  It fits the space perfectly.  It was so lovely, I could not bring myself to put our old, falling apart chairs on it.  I had a few ideas for new chairs and one of them was a long shot.

You see, a few months ago, I bought these awesome vintage Classmate chairs, from Mid Mod Men, with the hopes they would work in the kitchen.  Would you believe I only paid $125 for the set of four!? The wood tone was similar to our kitchen cabinets.  I loved the idea of the modern steel and frosted glass table with the vintage wood schoolhouse-style chairs.  The only problem was they looked completely wrong when we first tried them.  They just did not work, so I sent them off to the basement to hopefully use down there.

With the new rug in place, I decided to give the Classmate chairs another chance.  I brought up one to start and I kind of liked it.  Pretty soon I had the other three in place and I was in love.  Turns out the only thing wrong before was the old rug.  It was sucking the life out of that whole space.  The blue legs on the chairs clashed with the old rug and did not stand out.  With the new rug in place, I discovered the Classmate chairs actually do look wonderful with our frosted glass table.  And, now the blue legs pop off the Flor rug.

Enough about the way it looks, let’s talk about function.  The rug is not as long as the old one, but since we don’t use chairs at the end of the table it does not matter.  The good news is the rug is much wider and we can now fully pull out the chairs without them slipping off the rug.  The old rug was a high-pile pain-in-the-you-know-what to wipe spills from.  The Flor rug has been a cinch for wiping up spills.

The chairs are all functional now… no broken backs covered up with fabric.  They actually work a lot better for our boys.  The old chairs were backless and sadly on more than one occasion we had a little bottom fall through the back of the chair.  The Classmate chairs are still nice and open, but those two metal bars holding up the back-rest help keep little bottoms on their seats.  The back-rests are my favorite part of these chairs…they tilt, as in recline!  My hubby likes to lean back in his chairs, resulting in the old broken chair back.  I love that he can lean back in these, without actually leaning back and damaging the whole chair.

I also made one quick adjustment to the new old chairs to make them rug friendly.  The metal feet on the chairs were old and rusty on the bottom.  I picked up Magic Slider slip on feet and covered them up.  Now, I don’t have to worry about my boys touching rusty chair feet and the chairs glide across the rug like a dream.

So, new rug meets old chairs and our kitchen eat-in area lived happily ever after!