Did I mention that the entire reason I’m making over our entryway, staircase and upstairs landing for the One Room Challenge is all because a couple of years ago, after falling several times down the stairs, the dude said he wanted to cover up* our beautiful oak flooring with a stair runner?! That request essentially set off two years of searching for the perfect runner rug and, finally, pushing me to do the One Room Challenge because I needed a public deadline to just get it done. And so this weekend – finally!!! – we installed a stair runner. But not just any runner…

 

* For the record, the dude didn’t want to cover up our beautiful floors. He just didn’t want to slip every time he went down the stairs. Socks and wood flooring don’t always make a great pair.

 

Before I get into why this stair runner project was so…special…let me introduce myself to any newcomers. My name is Régine and I, along with my dude Daniel, are making our first house (a 1903 cottage that I call #thecozycottage) a home through renovation, design and food. This is my first time taking part in the ORC and I’m making over the entryway, staircase and upstairs landing entirely through DIY. To catch up on my ORC, check out posts Week 1, Week 2 and Week 3.

 

 

The reason why this project took two years is twofold. One, I hate runners. Well, hate is a strong word, but most of the ones I see are either boring, seem out of place (let’s just throw some carpet in between the upstairs and downstairs and see what happens!), are an extension of the carpet from the top floor, or are just straight up ugly. Two, I couldn’t find a runner I liked. Any low-pile rug I saw that caught my eye either ended up being a rug I saw a hundred times over on the interwebs or didn’t seem to have its own point of view. (That’s right, I just talked about rugs having their own point of view. But I’m passionate about rugs, as you can see here.

 

I spent two years obsessing over stair runners, looking for examples that I thought could work in our house. These Pinterest boards are proof (see here and here). The criteria were that it couldn’t be boring, that it couldn’t detract from the beautiful stained glass window in the middle landing of the staircase and that it had to flow with the rest of our house. Oh, and it had to have pink in it. I’ll get to that latter part in a second.

 

After a long search, I found this image and fell in love immediately. The shape! The drama! The beauty! So I was stuck yet again because this was obviously custom made, aka out of our budget, and nothing I saw after that would compare to this. The search continued with few options that I really liked.

 

 

But then I publicly stated that I was going to participate in the ORC so I had to hurry up and find a rug. I took several scouting trips to see if there were rugs that were inexpensive that didn’t offend me. I found two at IKEA, the Tanum flatweave rug for $14.99, one in a light pink and one in a burgundy. As I mentioned, I wanted pink so this was perfect. Why pink? Well, with all the different colors of stained glass in both windows, there is often a kind of pinkish glow on the walls when the sun is shining through. This could have been in part because of the previous paint color, but I just always had the feeling that something pink should go here.

 

 

While on this scouting trip to IKEA, I had a light bulb moment. With the two colors of the same rug, I had an idea to create an ombre effect, starting with the dark one at the bottom and then the lighter one at the top. Yes! My problem of boring stair runner syndrome was solved. Except, EXCEPT…

 

 

When I went back to IKEA to buy the rugs, the darker color was gone. Only the light pink remained. After two years of hunting for the perfect rug and not finding it, then finding something really affordable that led me to a creative moment and then returning just to have that creative thought dashed, I decided that I just would get the rugs and get on with it. That way, I’ll have something done for the One Room Challenge and, since they were so inexpensive, if I found something better later, we could always change it.

 

I bought five of the rugs two weekends ago and we installed them this past weekend, which gave me an entire week in between to obsess over them. And, thanks to the internet and electronics spying on us, I saw an ad for this rug from Kinder Ground. And then I had another lightbulb moment. What if I created that shape in the IKEA rug?! And my problem was solved! I had bought five rugs and I really only needed four so I could test it out on one and, if it didn’t work out, I’d be out $15, which isn’t a nightmare.

 

So I researched how to draw a hexagon and somehow drew an octagon instead???!!! Oops!  But whatever, it’s still a geometric shape and I knew it would still give me the effect I was going for.

 

 

Here’s how I DIYed the shape:

 

 

 

And here are the steps we took to line up and staple the rugs using a pneumatic staple gun:

 

 

For the middle landing, I had to cut the rugs from both sets and now each has a single “octogon” on the middle landing lined up along a piece of flooring.

 

 

I’m really excited that this turned out so well. Since this rug is so light and it’s in a high traffic area, I’m thinking of using Scotch Guard on it. Has anyone ever done that on a rug before? If so, let me know your thoughts about this.

 

I’ll show the full runner in the final ORC reveal that’s in two weeks. I don’t want to give it all away now! What’s next is making the front door less boring, hanging stuff, fixing any problems and styling.

 

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