New Carpet in our Lounge Room!

This post is somewhat overdue - it has been in draft for a long time, so in the spirit of Finishing Off, I thought I would post it now anyway - even though the carpet is 6 months old!!

Something that has been on our To Do list for years now, is to get new carpet.  When we moved in 8 years ago, we were thankful that the house had a neutral palette of cream carpet and tiles, which meant that we could be flexible with our colour schemes, without having to outlay money for new flooring.

However, with cream carpet comes spills and stains, and after 8 years of 'living' in our lounge room, the state of the carpet was quite embarrassing.  With the news that our little bundle of joy is on the way, we decided that new carpet was now a high priority - there is no way I was putting a baby down to play on this yucky floor!!

Above is a picture of our lounge room - before.  We are lucky to have a lovely big room, which has room for the TV and lounges at one end, and at the other end was room for our dining table.

Common sense tells you that 'dining' and 'carpet' are not a good combo, but we love the light in this room, and while we had no little ones to spill things, we have had our dining room in here for the past 8 years.

Again, thinking ahead to when the baby arrives, I decided that it would make sense to move the dining table out into the kitchen/living area (which is a big, empty, tiled space), and use the dining room end of the lounge room as a little playroom!  It means that the baby can play here in our main living area, which is also right beside the kitchen (where I am sure to be spending lots of time!), and will be easy to gate-off once he/she starts moving around.

So, just for fun, here are some photos of Mick and his dad pulling up the old carpet.  Look at how faded it has become!  This room gets the morning sun, and you can see how the carpet has faded dramatically - they promise me that my new carpet is UV treated :)

And here is the 'after' of our beautiful new carpet!  We just love it!  It is so soft underfoot - I even had a nap on it the day it was laid!

So, the furniture is back in place in the lounge room...

And the little playroom will be an area that is sure to evolve as the baby grows and its needs change.  For now, in here, we just have my rocker (kindly loaned off my lovely sister), and a little side table for the bits and pieces that I will need when nursing.  We also have a playmat and rocker for the baby, and that is about all for now.

I didn't want to rush into designing how we will use this little space, rather I will just see what we need as we go along.  In the long run, we will need to get blinds and obviously furniture, but for now it serves the purpose.

I can't believe how much difference new carpet makes to this space!  It feels fresh, clean and makes the space look new again!  It is now six months on, and it still looks brand new!  We also carpeted the baby's room at the same time, but now I need to save up to finish doing the other 3 bedrooms in the house too :)