Basement Main Room Materials and Colors
For the main space of our basement we decided that we wanted something warmer on our feet. We had carpet in the basement previously everywhere, including the bathroom. I guess that shouldn’t be a total surprise since our upstairs bathroom had carpet in it too! Gross! I think I had blocked that out of my memory. Anyway back to the carpet. I have been searching for inexpensive but durable carpet tile to put install down there. I like the idea of carpet tile, because you can replace individual sections and it has a rubber backing on it that will deal with moisture better than broadloom carpet. What I don’t like is the price! Most good carpet tile runs $5+ a sf (i.e. FLOR), which seems like too much to spend for our basement. So I searched and searched the internet for a good deal. Then I came upon my answer, Carpet Corporation of America based out of Georgia. I mentioned them before but I wasn’t sold on the pattern so I had been waffling.
Here are the options we looked at:
Odd Lots "Bright"
Odd Lots "Grey"
1. Odd Lots: The least expensive are Odd Lots. These are priced in the $.29-.49 sf range (.29 for Class A Seconds and .49 for First Quality). They come in several color families including Grey Family, Earth Family, Bright Family and Blue Family. They look quite fun and under different circumstances I would have used them in a second. Normally that would be right up my alley! I was having issues though with these paired with all of the beadboard. That is a lot to take in! So back to the drawing board!
This was our second choice
Carpet Tile We Selected
Another Option that was too tan
Another Option that I decided was too light
2. Small Lots (basically leftovers): These are currently on sale for $.69 sf. They offer small (and sometimes large) amounts of several hundred carpet tile patterns. The images are on the website but I was confused about the quantities. So I called them and they showed me where you could download a pdf spreadsheet showing the quantities of each (click on the second dog outline down from the top to download from their website). Then you have the long task of sorting out which carpet tiles they have in the quantity you need. We needed 300 sf (for a 250 sf room with extra for cutting and replacement). It took me a couple of hours to sort through everything, but I managed to narrow it down to a few that I thought would work with our color palette. There are some CRAZY patterns that could be pretty fun if you felt like making a statement.
Shipping: This is often the dealbreaker. Either it is too expensive or too difficult to coordinate. The way that they work is to use freight (which means sitting at your house all day waiting for a truck to pull up and for you to unload it). Fortunately they recommend two options. One is getting it delivered to a business address, so you can unload it from the truck to your car. The second is picking it up at a distribution center. Fortunately we live only a few miles from the distribution center, so I am going with that option. I will still have to load it into my car myself, but I can schedule the time, which is really helpful (especially with 2 kids). The price came in at $99.90 for shipping.
I ordered the carpet yesterday and it is suppose to be at the distribution center by early next week! The total for everything was $306.90 (basically $1 a sf). So stay tuned to see how the quality and installation goes!
What do you think?
* To see all of the posts about our basement click here.
I have been lusting after FLOR tiles ever since I heard about them and saw them in your house. But they are so expensive! I love the prices at CCofA, but the number of choices are so overwhelming and I feel it’s hard to get an accurate sense of the carpet colors and how a whole rug of a given tile would look from the website. But I’m also paralyzed by the options in the FLOR catalogs, too, and they’re so much better with their marketing. Ugh.
It is a little bit of leap of faith to order these, without samples, but they will pull one out to discuss the color. I am very curious to see how they come out. I think if you stick to fairly neutral colors you would be pretty safe. Most of these are corporate carpets, so they tend to be “safe”. Although the crazy ones (from retail) are pretty crazy.
Very nice selection! The found cabbage bag seems to really “pop” with it.
Thanks Stacey! I still need to figure out how I am going to frame the cabbage.