We're floored

As previously noted, I invested in carpet tiles from FLOR to use as an area rug in the nursery.

The carpet tiles are environmentally friendly and touted as very easy to use. I watched a segment on Martha Stewart where they showed people scoring the tiles on the back and then snapping them in half and I was hooked. I even created a design that I was really excited about using that would require a lot of cutting, but would be worth it in the end because of the whimsical nature of the design.


However, when the tiles came, I determined very quickly that cutting the tiles was in no way, shape or form as easy as they made it look on TV. The problem is that you have to have a perfectly straight line and it is difficult to get the carpet knife to score flat against the measuring device. If you don't cut in an exact straight line, than they won't line up well and your carpet will have gaps in it...which wouldn't be that big of a deal if you were putting different colors next to each other, but I was planning on putting white next to white in order to make the design above. (PLUS the tiles are all 19.something" square...so you don't even get a nice even measurement to work with.)

So, it was time to rethink my options. I was fortunate that the green tiles came already pre-cut in half, so I at least had some variety to work with.

The first design I tried was based off of the design on the website with wide and thin stripes:

I liked how the stripes worked well with the stripe on the wall, but my husband wasn't a huge fan of it not being symmetrical so I decided to mix up the colors in the middle:

That combination was ok, but was neither pizazzy nor simple/classic. So we decided to change up the outer stripes as well and came up with our final and permanent design:

I like how the longer, thin stripes that set off the sections still evoke the stripe on the wall, yet the carpet seems much more kid-appropriate now. The squares are all replaceable and I have extra squares in case we ever need to do that. Also, they attach to each other and not to the floor, which means when I decide in a week to flip the whole thing around so that the white squares aren't in such a high traffic area, I won't have to undo any of my work.

So, we're getting there...I still don't have a theme and I think that is the way I want to keep it. I figure the room will be filled with toys eventually and the colors won't really matter anymore, but for now, it seems to be working out to be a fairly peaceful place to hang out and be a baby.