When you buy a rug for your closet-sized home office, and then you move to a house with a bigger office, your rug that looked so cute before now looks… awkward.
Before, this 5′ x 8′ rug took up almost all the floor space of my former office, and it made the space feel bigger. Now, it had the opposite effect. I had shoved it over to the side so the wheels of my desk chair wouldn’t bunch it up. Jim said I should move it all the way over so it would be under my desk. We went back and forth on that point. But the bottom line? It was just too small.
So when I got an e-mail from the folks at Layla Grayce, asking me if I would try out one of their many home-decor products, I knew instantly what I would look for: a new rug. I liked the graphic pattern and light weight of the old one, though the gray, I felt, was a bit dark.
Well, I found a pretty awesome replacement: Dash & Albert’s Lattice Woven cotton rug in a much lighter Dove Gray. This time, I went for the 6′ x 9′ size.
I loved it the instant it came, but as with any decorating project, the addition of one improvement begets the need for others.
My stupid desk chair was wrinkling this nice rug, and it was also hard to move the chair back and forth. So we went to get one of those plastic chair mats. Not magazine-ready ideal, of course, but life happens: It protects the rug and I can move my chair in and out without worry.
The new look prompted me to want to paint the ugly round table in the corner that had once been covered with a skirt. I can’t yet afford to have a new skirt made in the fabric I want, so Jim (my hero!) stepped in and painted the base in the same pale pink (Ralph Lauren Place Card Pink) as my huge bulletin board, and then he suggested painting the underside of the glass top black. I love it!
The rug is a nice ground for my Philippe Starck Victoria Ghost chairs, and a watercolor I bought last year at the Harlem Fine Arts Show when it came to DC. It’s by a young Haitian artist named Frandy Jean. It depicts a woman setting up her market stand, and the painting is intentionally not finished—a work in progress—sort of like how I view myself.
The rug also offsets a huge poster of my first cover story for Washington Spaces. It was a gift from my former editor and enduring friend, Trish Donnally. It depicts the Georgetown dining room of Bo and Alison Jia, the talents behind Middle Kingdom Porcelain.
Sometimes rugs can make a statement in themselves, but other times, they serve to highlight everything else in the room, as is the case here. I already knew Dash & Albert had wonderful rugs, because we used one to transform my son’s former bedroom from toddler play space to big-boy room.
Henry’s rug is now in storage because his new room has wall-to-wall carpeting, but I’m glad we’re still able to display D&A in its latest iteration here. Many thanks to Layla Grayce for the opportunity.
Jennifer Sergent says
December 1, 2016 at 9:25 amI love that story! Thanks, Heather!
Heather Bates says
December 1, 2016 at 9:15 amThe right rug size is SO important! Glad you were able to find the right one. We’ve been on a downsizing journey. In the 20×21 Family room we once had, I placed an 11×17 1982 Meshad rug. worked perfectly for the space.
Then we moved to a slightly smaller home, which had equally large rooms in the front for living and dining ( I used the living room for my office), but the family room was too short for my rug. It spent three years stored in the unfinished basement.
2.5 years ago,we moved to a Townhouse (to try this size). What a surprise to find that the open 2nd floor was large enough to put my rug back down on the wood floor! The other half is this hideous green tile, that I try to ignore. Be moving again, end of June 2017. We’ll see what happens next in the rug story.