a whole new flor (part one)

I should seriously stop posting iPhone pictures on the blog, but I am lazier than you know and it's much easier to email myself the photo than it is to upload it onto my computer.

Anywho, our Flor tiles arrived Wednesday night, and we are so excited to put them together!  Here's a sneak peek:

Just look at them compared to our other rugs! It looks like the beach--albeit a modular, Tetris-inspired, very square-edged beach--was transported to our floor.

I also have stellar news. On our nice hardwoods, the brand-spanking new Flor tiles (with their attached pad) are surprisingly cushy. It's definitely not the same cushiness level as a high-pile fancy-pants carpet, but it's definitely comfortable.

After a bit of back and forth, Husband agreed/conceded/was bullied into agreeing that rotating one of the striped tiles 90 degrees was the best way to go. We'll do a final check when we lay out the entire design, but I'd be surprised if I didn't have an OCD panic attack about the stripes not lining up and demand that they be rotated. It's not that I require them to match, actually. It's just that I think the non-aligning stripes draw the eye to the modular design in a negative way. I prefer to work with that aspect rather than have it work against me.

 In true Philirao fashion, we'll "installing" our rug this evening after work.

New Couch will arrive between 9:30 and 12:30 on Saturday, and we'd rather install the rug when we only have one couch to move, but before Sad Elephant departs next week. Because we're crazy and excited and want to stop blogging about doing things and actually do them. Since we planned to do this starting yesterday, and I have already read the instructions and viewed instructional videos multiple times, we're mentally ready to do this after 8 hours of work (and a huge high-profile event here at my place of employment).

I kind of feel like a superhero. A design superhero.

living room "flor" design

As always, what we went in thinking and what we came out with wouldn't have recognized each other on the street.

I went in desperate for neutrals, figuring this was the only way to brighten up our dim living room.

Husband went into a store that sells modular carpet squares (with the pad built in) wanting cushy comfort. Such things aren't to be had in the traditional sense.

Let's backtrack to describe the journey that led us to the Flor store in Soho.

A few years ago, we visited the apartment of our dear friends (who have written this blog about their adventures in home-owning and fighting with old wallpaper) and were admiring their very unique carpet. They told us it was from Flor, and explained how it worked and how they used it to carpet rooms and hallways without the permanence of wall-to-wall carpet.

I was hooked. I went home, ordered the catalog, jumped on the website and started designing a carpet for our bedroom, which was at that time in desperate need of a rug. A Macy's gift card later, we purchased two area rugs that I'm now completely dissatisfied with, but could improve with a good shampoo. (A future project indeed.)

Fast forward to now, when I realized that an area rug to adequately cover a 12x18' room would cost me more than I was willing to spend. I also realized that I hated 95% of the rugs out there, unless they were miles out of my price range. You see, I live in a pre-war apartment in New York, so I have basically no sound insulation between my floor and my neighbors' ceiling. Sound carries. In fact, it amplifies. I really want to cover as much of the floor as humanly possible.

And then I remembered Flor.