apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

WOW, can you rip it out and paint the subfloor in an appealing color? Paint is the cheapest fix there is when it comes to something hideous like that blue carpet. I have been considering paint the the floor in a room of my house because I want the carpet out so badly and can't afford hardwood right now. Good luck and enjoy your new role has homeowner!

I think I'd take some little unnoticeable little corner and peek underneath it and have a look, just in case it's some ridiculously gorgeous hardwood floor underneath, because there's a chance that you might not have to live another day with that carpet, if you don't want to.

But... you might want to do that little peek-and-see dance in every single room, in case the flooring isn't the same throughout.

Anyway... let's pretend you're stuck with it, though. I think that if you did the walls in some kind of fairly cool grey, be it light or medium, would be kind of nice, but I'd also paint those wooden window frames, as well, since I'm not crazy about the wood look, especially next to that blue. I'd probably do the window frames and other trim something like white or a darker version of whatever grey you do.

If you really want to use a warm tone, then I would probably do some kind of brown that's the same tone (lightness-and-darkness) as the blue, so that it would contrast in a fairly subtle way. Meanwhile, you said it's a house and that carpet is throughout? Different paint colors that each have different things in common with your carpet could give you som variety along with the unity.

That was my reaction, too. Rip it out, unless there's something really bad underneath.

Look into carpet and vinyl remnants too. Even if it's not what you want for the room in the end, getting rid of that blue carpet would be a plus.

Paint everything exactly the same color--walls, ceiling, the outside of the house, casegoods--and get matching fabrics---curtains, bedspread, pillows, upholstery, bath linens, slipcovers--and everyone will just assume it was intentional, exactly like an all-white environment, except blue instead of white.

Be bold.

Have you considered using a large area rug on top of it as camouflage? That's what I have to do with the disgusting rug in my apartment.

What are the measurements of the room? I would get a very large Sisal Rug from Pottery Barn or maybe a heavy wool rug from Angela Adams that can be put on top of that blue nightmare.

Use light upholstery colors and let the blue be the main color in the space. Myabe accentuate it with some lime green or tangerine pillows to dissolve the blue and not make it look like some kind of grandma room.

er, disgusting carpet in my apartment. The rug is not disgusting.

More info...

I definately want to paint, not sure about the color.

There is subflooring under the blue carpet, according to the realtor, not sure what kind. The awful stuff is in the living room and in the short hallway. The bedrooms also have carpet that I would like to replace, but it's a boring beige that I can live with relatively painlessly for a while. The kitchen has some not so pretty vinyl, but it's in good enough shape that it doesn't really bother me.

It's just the hideous blue carpet that I want to deal with ASAP. (And the mint green walls in my bedroom, but paint is an easy fix there!)

Thanks!

If those wood frames are original, that ups your odds that there might be hardwood underneath the shag. In that case, jackpot. It's hard to go wrong with wood as a major neutral. I'd leave the trim work natural if it's in good shape, since I'd want to show it off. Trim that's good enough wood to go unpainted is not cheap. Add walls painted a color you love, and you're set.

If you are *not* lucky under the carpet, the question becomes how much do you like blue? If it's a shade of blue that you like and that harmonizes with what you already own, work with it. Again, paint the walls a color you love. You may need to add details to bridge the wall and floor colors tho. A blue sky ceiling could help, or curtains that tie together the wall and floor color.

If you hate blue, some kind of complimentary color scheme may help. Shades of peach, orange and brown can really pop against blue. Just make sure to vary the intensity so the room isn't made too energetic from the warm colors and high contrast.

In any of these cases, the natural wood trim can give you a solid neutral to work with. That will help tie the room together color-wise, and make it easier to select items that will work even with the carpet gone.

Measurements are 11.5 x 15. There is a chimney of red brick in the corner that sticks out about a square foot. It looks awful next to the blue carpet.

Nthing to rip it up anyway. We sanded and polyurethaned our plank subfloors, which look pretty damn awesome. But even if you just have a plywood subfloor, you can paint it and put a throw-rug on top of it.

I'd rip out the carpet and put down an area rug to cover most of the subfloor, specifically traffic areas. You could paint the parts that won't be covered by the area rug so that it matches the rest of the room.

As I understand it, you don't want to walk on the bare subfloor for any length of time. Since it's not made to be walked upon directly, you'll wear it and then have to replace it too.

Otherwise, you could embrace the 70s and decorate the room as if the shag carpet was on purpose.

Go ahead. Lift up part of that carpet and its pad. Something tells me you will be happy. There is nothing at all to be done to tone down what you've got. Sure lay another rug on it and trip away for the next x number of years. Not to mention, carpet on carpet is a p.i.t.a. to vacuum.

Lisa, I'd pull up the carpet, paint the subfloor, and top it with an area rug. Otherwise, you'll probably end up compromising on the rest of your decorating choices just to coordinate them with a carpet you despise. However, if you don't want to rip it out, I'd go with warm neutral walls and furniture. Bring different shades of the blue in as accents - I'd definitely paint the ceiling a really pretty pale blue and toss in some patterned blue throw pillows and some cobalt glass vases or lamps.

Whatever you do, do not decorate your room around a feature that you hate! Especially a feature that you will remedy eventually.

if she cant afford to rip the carpet up, what makes you think she can afford an Angela Adams rug? i dont mean to be critical of the suggestion, i just thought it was kind of funny.

I definately do NOT want to decorate TO the rug. That thing is coming up eventually. Whatever I decorate now, I would like it to look just as nice on a hardwood floor down the road.

There is no hidden pretty hardwood floor underneath. I asked what was under there and got the sub-flooring answer. The house was previously owned by an elderly lady that apparently either really liked blue shag, or she got her carpet on clearance when the awful stuff didn't sell.

Wall-to-wall carpet is the scurge of so many otherwise-okay places. Why are people still using it? A few months after you put it down it starts getting dirty and worn-out looking. Then it's this gross thing you can't get rid of: it traps dirt and dust, everytime you spill anything it's a crisis.... death to the carpeting I say!
Area rugs rock... partly because you can throw them away and start over without much fuss.

Well, sub-floor tends to be plywood, but I would actually LOOK at it, and then seriously, while you're waiting to be able to afford whatever kind of wood you want, you could paint that subfloor something like black or white, or something that could actually look so dang chic that you'll never even want to put something else.

This really is a perfect opportunity to do something ingenious.

We ripped up the carpet to the subfloor when we moved into our house and painted the subfloor with a dark brown porch and floor paint after a coat of kilz as a primer. 3 years later, it looks a bit rough, but that's with 1 full time dog and multitudes of guest dogs, children, people, parties, shoes being worn, and furniture being dragged across it. It was a good, cheap fix, a good project for a long weekend, because you DO have to let it dry 24 hours between primer and paint, and 48 hours after painting for a smooth finish.

Seriously though, everyone is right--paint the subfloor in a high gloss white, throw down an area rug, and go with it. Heck, there was even another post on AT today that showed varnished plywood in a high-end loft! Painted subfloor mostly covered by a big cheap sisal or cotton rug is going to be way way better than the squishy feeling of that kind of carpet underfoot.

Pretend it isn't there.

S

Different shades of blue look very well together, so I agree with everyone who says to paint the walls and ceiling in pale blues. In the photo the carpet doesn't look that bad, really. Perhaps the texture (invisible to us) is what you object to. Living with a shag carpet is not always so great, I know from experience. At any rate, paint is cheap and easy to change when you get tired of it and are ready to replace the carpet.

I am in favor of leaving the wood -- for the reasons stated, though perhaps it would look calmer in such a small space to have everything one color. But I imagine you will have curtains, floor to ceiling, that will cover the wood trim -- they could possibly be white and airy to reflect the light. Or you could have wooden curtain rods to harmonize with the trim.

Have you considered painting the brick chimney white?

If you do a google search: "decorating with blue"
you can get some good ideas. Related shades of lilac purple and green are harmonious. A few tomato red or orange cushions and/or throws would provide contrast and warm things up. Translucent blue glass bottles or vases are suggestions for accents.

Yes, painting over the brick. I lived in an apartment with exposed brick that was painted white once and I loved it.

get rid of that hideous carpet, whatever is unerneath will surely be better than that!

Beware a blind "rip it up and paint the subfloor" option unless you've got the $$ for area rugs and runners. My subfloors are chipboard, not plywood.

At the least, peek under a corner and decide.

Don't take the realtor's word, look underneath.

And people put down wall-to-wall carpet because it costs $2/sq.ft. Hardwood at $5 to 10/sq.ft. plus a grand or two for an area rug is a bit more expensive.

Since your room is 11.5' x 15' you're a good candidate for a remnant, as carpet comes in 12' widths. Check your local Lowe's or any carpet store for that matter; when they get to the end of a roll they sell the last bit as a remnant. It might be cheap enough to be a temporary solution until you can install your dream floor.

You didn't say if you lived in New York, but check with your local Habitat for Humanity. In NYC we have Build It Green, but there are numerous ReStores operated by Habitat. Materials are donated and sold at retail (discounted!) to raise $ for Habitat. Go to http://www.habitat.org and enter your zip code to find a store in your area.

Maybe you could find some wood flooring there, or perhaps save enough on something else that would allow you to put that money towards your floor budget? Good luck to you and congratulations on your new home!

I'd pull up a corner and check as from what I can tell, it looks like your house is older, like pre mid 60's perhaps and if that's the case, a lot of homes built at that time did have hardwood floors because they either didn't have carpeting or it didn't go all the way to the wall, leaving some HW flooring exposed along the edges. We lived in an early to mid 60's era split level and that's what they did with the original carpeting.

Again, don't take the realitor's word, pull up a corner and check.

Find out what your sub-floor is, and if it can be painted for god's sake rip that carpet out and paint the sub-floor. If the sub-floor can't be painted see if you can get a remnant in a neutral color and cover it with that instead.

Do not decorate around that atrocious carpet.

Ummm....matches get my vote..

First, unless the realtor grabbed a corner of rug and pulled, there's no compelling reason to trust his/her answer about the subfloor. Your realtor is probably going with what the owner says, which is what she thinks she remembers from before she had that shag laid in 1982, which assumes she was clear on the concept in the first place.

Second, chipboard can be painted (prime first!). Plywood takes paint beautifully (or will look extremely Modernist with stain). Pine board subfloors can be sanded, stained, and sealed (though your house is probably too new for those). Concrete slab-on-grade (common on the left coast) can be painted or etched and sealed.

In short, the only subfloors that would really be a problem bigger than a couple cans of paint and sealer are (a) subfloors with bits of horrible linoleum and tarry glue attached or (b) subfloors with holes in them.

At least look under the rug before spending a cent on decorating around it. You own. You can live with modern primitivism in sealed subfloors as a decorating statement without offending a landlord.

Maybe you can try to imagine where your furniture is going and how much area it occupied?
Once all the furniture is in place, the area that is showing the carpet would not be so obvious anymore.....

I had a hideous, mottled, burnt orange carpet once, which I couldn't afford to do anything about, although I couldn't b/c it was a rental anyway. I wound up just pretending it wasn't there and decorating the way I wanted to. If you are going to start investing in things like furniture and other decor, you might as well bring in the colours you want now, with an eye to eventually changing the flooring.

I like the suggestions of ripping up the carpet and painting the subfloor, but that's not always as easy as it sounds. If you can't do that, I would think a couple of big, cheap area rugs would do the trick temporarily. I've used sisal and jute rugs over top of carpets quite well.

After you've lived with the blue shag for awhile, it's likely that you will either stop seeing it quite so strongly, or you will be inspired to find the extra money to do the flooring sooner!

Regarding everyone's suggestion of an area rug...the problem is that an area rug that will be large enough to make a difference in that room will cost almost as much as putting in new carpet, or laminate hardwood.

I had the same issue with the master bedroom in the condo I bought this past winter, and I ended up installing laminate hardwood from ikea. It cost about $300 and was a royal pain in the ass to install, but much better than stained, 1980's style, teal carpet. You could probably have a better carpet installed for about that as well.

Some tips for reducing the price of having carpet installed: rip out and dispose of the old carpet yourself, and try to find some remants on sale as recommended above.

A warning: ripping up carpet is pretty annoying, get a good pair of kneepads. It's totally doable though. Welcome to home ownership!!

10 or 20 years ago people painted floors white and stenciled simple geometric area rug/patchwork quilt patterns on to them. It would be a lot of work, but if the sub-floor is something that can be painted, putting some type of pattern on it could be a way to add visual interest to the floor without paying the price of an area rug.

Area rugs don't have to have pile - they can be flat-woven kilims or dhurries. Jute could be another option. See if you can finding something affordable on eBay - but watch the shipping costs!

Too bad there is no way to mow a shag rug and turn it into something flat...

My sister painted her chipboard subfloor bright shiny white as a temporary fix in her game room. It looks WONDERFUL. Go for it...rip up a corner and see what's truly down there.

Click the picture of the house in the link below, then click the Kitchen 2 photograph.

The owner/architect stained and sealed his subfloor to save money, and it turned out beautifully. He says he may put something else over it in the future, but I think I'd probably keep it just like it is!

http://www.mascord.com/plan_details.asp?PlanID=2178

i don't know what 'subfloor' means - at Mum's, it's concrete (built 1970); at my place (1928) it's timber (pine?) planks.

Once the carpet is up, all the staples have to come out and any nail heads hammered in; THEN you can sand.

I would think about the eventual destiny of this floor - but look at it first.

Particle board subfloor can look like cork if it is stained & sealed.

It's funny, this is the most thoughtful, kindly, blog I've seen on at.

It's such a humble space but the advice is brilliant.

I have nothing to add - except for the fact - that I should submit pix of my own place - with all of the pros and cons of fixing it up.

I have to ask... where is that other AT post with the painted high-gloss white subfloor? Because I haven't seen that. (?!? am I blind?)... I'd go with everyone else, though. Rip a corner (or all of it! Eeech), see what's underneath and deal with the subfloor. Much easier than dealing with that ugly, probably dusty, carpet.

I haven't read through all of the comments but the general consensus seems to be RIP IT OUT. No matter what, RIP IT OUT. Whatever is underneath can't be as bad as what is above. Maybe you'll get lucky with sweet wood floors. If it's just nasty subflooring, paint that sucker - I'm loving the high-gloss white paint idea. Or even high gloss black...

Keep us posted...

I'd take it up and paint whatever is underneath as others have suggested. I believe you can also have carpet dyed. There was an Australian makeover programme I used to see and they frequently did this.

Hardwood Floors.

Um, if she can't afford carpet, what makes you think hardwood floors are in the budget? (See also Angela Adams comment above)

I say, have a massive housewarming party, and have each one of your friends "sponsor" a square yard of carpet.

Have you actually priced out replacing it with a low-grade but visually acceptable alternative? I've often found carpet to be cheaper than I was expecting...

Hi! Once you've finished taking out the carpet and painting the walls, you can add art to the walls for a very simple and easy makeover! wwww.artaissance.com is a wonderful tool to use to help you decide what type of art to add to the walls...and it's very reasonable in price! Artaissance is an easy way to make any space MORE than bearable...enjoy!

Planning on the hardwood floors, but can't afford it yet! :)

The ripping it up and painting the subfloor is definately something I am going to look into.

Thanks everyone! :)

Ajones--

Are there companies that pay people to get products named, placed or linked to on interior blogs? Just curious. Or maybe you are just loyal to a handful of companies...

Lisa, the suspense is killing me -- please peel back a corner and report back!!!

It's impossible to tell from the pic and description what your taste and existing furniture are, but if you have paintable floors (no mastic or asbestos tiles), a decoration hint might be that glossy white floors (and walls when they're made of wood) is a classic beach-house look, and modest, seasonal beach houses of a certain era often had those lowish ceilings that you appear to have. You can complement with sky-blue fabrics, etc., and have fun with it.

Here are some suggestions which might help.

Definitely pull up a corner of the carpet and examine the floor beneath. If it is plywood subfloor, you have the option of painting, or otherwise refinishing it. If you are interested in purchasing a rug as an interim step toward a bigger floor replacement project, consider simply painting, painting a border, or otherwise treating/refinishing the floor only on its perimeter leaving the center untouched. When the rug is rolled out, only the finished perimeter will be visible. Using this approach will save you a lot of time, money and effort. Make sure the perimeter is wide enough to overlap 1-2 feet beneath the rug permitting you to shift the rug's placement in the room, if needed.

In shopping for some sort of affordable rug, there are a number of options. Carpet (broadloom) remnants are the cheapest. Most credible rug and carpet stores offer an edge binding and cutting service. Therefore you can shop for a remnant then have the store cut it to the appropriate size and then bound. Binding your rug will give your floor a finished look and prevent the unending fiber shedding that will happen with an unbound remnant. Binding a rug will reduce up to 3" off of each side, therefore make sure your measurements compensate for that loss. Nylon and wool are the best, most durable rug fibers, while polyester and other fibers are lesser.

If you can't find a remnant you like, you can order any carpet selection the store has as a bound rug. Doing this will save installation cost as binding is 1/4 to 1/2 the cost.

Ebay or Craigslist are good sources for machine made and hand knotted rugs. I just purchased a new wool Nourison 8x11' rug on Ebay for half the sale price at Macy's. People often sell rugs and bound carpet at tag and garage sales.

if you can't afford to replace it yet, i wouldn't bother spending more trying to match it. i'd rip it out (it's most likely not clean anyway) & make sure the floor beneath is sealed even if it's particle board. decorate as if you had your ideal floor. then, you'll be ready.