Diary of a Dive - Part 4 - Updating Old Furniture

By Michelle Portesi
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I found this lovely hutch in a second hand store for a mere $200 over a decade ago. I loved its overall shape and style, but I confess, I really hated the stain color. Kind of a dark ashy brown that had yellowed with age. Emulating the hinky look of that period, their idea of 'antiquing' it was to take a black paint crayon and make little squiggly marks all over it. (You can't see them in the photo, but trust me, they're there.) I also wasn't wild about the wired open doors either.

I originally bought it to
put my TV in. The center section fit the older style 24" TV perfectly width wise, and the VCR tapes fit perfectly in the drawers.

This was before flat screen TV's were affordable, and the old style TV was super deep, requiring that I cut a hole in the hutch's back to shove the rest of the TV's hind quarters through,

 in addition to needing a hole for the electrical plug. I admit, I did a sloppy job of cutting the hole, but since you couldn't see it when the TV was in it, I grinned and ignored it.  I always knew that eventually I'd get around to refurbishing it, and I vacillated for years as to whether to strip it down entirely and re-stain it a nicer color, or give in to my 'cottage look' proclivities, and just paint it white.
Guess which idea finally won? LOL  

Now that I no longer use it for the TV, I wanted to turn it back into the hutch's original purpose, which was for your typical dining room dishware and accoutrements storage. I had some mirror cut to size for the back of the hutch, which nicely covered my sloppily cut hole.  I pulled out the wired inserts from the doors, with the intent of replacing them with beveled glass...that is until I priced them out...  


 YIKES! Just those two small glass door inserts alone were going to cost over double what I originally paid for the hutch!  So I may need to rethink that option and decide if I just want to eventually put in some less expensive antique patterned glass, or live without until the day I can afford the beveled. (...and that could be a  l-o-o-o-o-n-g wait...)

I painted the old, turn of the last century, vintage, Windsor desk chair while I was at it. Yes, call me a blasphemer for painting it. The current finish was completely trashed, and I had already stripped it, sanded it and re-stained it once already when I had first bought it oh so many moons ago. It was a hot mess even way back then. One could even see all the hues of the chair's former transformations on the bottom of the seat.

The desk chair was the first piece of furniture I purchased when I moved out on my own and I still love its petite and delicately bended shape. It's had several decades of hard use and many moves - and that's in addition to the many years it had already racked up long before I bought it. Oh, all the stories it could tell!

But I digress...

The hutch has quite a bit of elaborate routing and carving, and I wanted a vintage feel, so I got some light grained sand paper and gently rubbed some of the edges so that the previous stain underneath would show through and showcase all of the hutches intricate detail. The handles to the hutch were beautifully shaped, but they were made of ugly colored, cheap pot metal, so I painted those white too with spray enamel. Originally I was going to seal the whole thing with water based varnish, but it really yellowed the white paint, so I bought some high quality furniture paste wax and sealed it that way. It only slightly darkened the white paint (and with no yellowing) which left the hutch with a lovely satin sheen that wasn't too glossy.

 

Next up, I'll be re-upholstered and painting a bench seat that doubles as my coffee table and extra dining table seating. And being hopelessly creative, I've got lots of fabric I've been carting around for years that needs to be used.

Reduce . Reuse . Recycle

In a small studio apartment, everything has to be multi-purpose!

Diary of a Dive - Part 3

I know it's been eons since I posted, and I have been working on projects for the apartment, just in bits and parts.  I wanted to post updates in some sort of order, but of course, in order is not how projects actually got done.

So in keeping with my vision, here's what happened to the rest of the kitchen once I finally got all the pieces in place.  (You can see the entirety of the sink side of the kitchen in the previous blog post: Diary of a Dive - part 2.  You can see what the whole hot mess looked like originally in Diary of a Dive - Part 1)

With no cabinets big enough in the kitchen to fit pots and pans, I had to get creative. I came across a clearance curtain rod for a mere $6, and hung that over the range to hang the smaller pots, pans and lids. I used cheapo shower curtain metal rings that I bent so that the pots would hang sideways.

I also purchased a two sided cast iron grill/griddle that doubles as drop off space for the small 24" range.  Plus I can make pancakes on one side, turn it over and grill a steak or whatever on the other. Small kitchens have to do multiple tasks in limited space.

An added shelf on top of the range hides an unsightly gap and creates extra space for small kitchen do-dads. The original install for the gas line was a bit sloppy, and it required that the range be pulled away from the wall several inches to accommodate the pipe that stuck out too far from that wall.  That created a 24" wide and several inch deep hole for stuff to fall down behind the range. (Ugh!!! So annoying!) Not to mention, it looked awful. The quick shelf fix killed two birds with one stone.

Also note the marble lazy Susan you can see in the right hand corner. I purchased this some time ago when Cost Plus World Market still carried this wonderful item. It's been a life saver! After some years in restaurant environments, I'd become a grab and run cook (or maybe I was always that way). I don't want to dig for things I use all the time, and since this kitchen has only 2 drawers anyway (and those are only 9" wide on the interiors), I needed something that would solve those issues. The lazy Susan holds a utensil holder, olive oil decanter, butter crock, wine bottle ...and a variety of other items I use all the time to cook with.

And Look! I finally found all my coffee cups!

But the biggest score was the work island. (See photo below). The apartment had just a vacant hole next to the refrigerator. Since the existing countertop on the sink side of the kitchen was barely large enough to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on, I was in serious need of a countertop area big enough to actually prep a meal at...or at least something more substantive than a PBJ.

I had wandered into the thrift store hoping to find silverware inserts for my tiny drawers. But there in the parking lot, was the perfect sized rolling cart island, complete with marble top, a decent sized drawer and even a roll out inside the cabinet. An open shelf area accommodated a long basket I already had that just happened to fit perfectly into the space. It even had a built in knife block. God was definitely smiling on me that day!
Cost: A whopping $125.  Easily one of the best and most fortuitous purchases I've ever stumbled upon.
The kitchen is tiny, only 7'10" wide x 7' 3" long, so getting a decent shot of this is difficult, but you get the idea...

As a kitchen designer, one of my favorite items is the spice drawer insert, and I always suggest this to my clients. If you're a little 5' squirt like me (and even if you aren't) one of the most difficult things is trying to find your spices in an upper cabinet. Stuff gets buried, and to find anything in the back requires pulling out all the things in front of it to get at it.  I can barely reach anything at all on the second shelf of a cabinet without a stool, so upper cabinets for food and spice storage is rather useless for me. Dishes yes. Spices no.

So the spice insert in a drawer suits me perfectly. You see exactly what you need in an instant, pull it out, use it, and it goes right back into its 'space'. No muss, no fuss, no digging.
Some folks like to arrange them alphabetically. I have them arranged as I tend to use them: baking spices first, cooking herbs next, and novelty or less used items following.
And the spice insert actually holds quite a bit for the space it takes up. I have 24 spice bottles that fit in this rack which is less than 15 inches wide. (There is another row behind the 3 you see. The drawer on the island isn't a full extension, so I do have to do a little jockeying to get to the very last row. I put spices there I don't use much...like pumpkin pie spice.) The in drawer spice holder is by Rev A Shelf. Order it online from them. You can thank me later...

The island solved a lot of problems, but I still didn't have storage for most things your average kitchen has. Mixing bowls, pie plates, roasting pans, microwaves...you name it.

So I purchased some shelves and metal brackets at the local home improvement store and installed them. The decorative shelf at the top I already had. I previously had used it over my full size bed as a sort of headboard. Since I'm living in a studio now and I don't have a full bed in it, my lovely carved shelf needed a new home. It was installed over the basic shelving to top it off.

I realize that most people don't care for open shelving, but this is a studio rental, and I'm more interested in inexpensive functionality in a tiny space than trying to create a showcase kitchen (which I would normally be doing for a client). My own personal kitchens however are workhorses.  I actually cook...and I fully admit I'm a messy and impatient one.  Open shelving makes for more grab and run- just like a restaurant kitchen.

You'll note that even though my storage is open shelving, I do have a penchant for buying nice looking bowls and pans in screaming red, and therefor my open storage at least appears somewhat decorative.

Now the following is the item that has been holding up my blog post on finishing the kitchen, as this little ditty was going to set me back a bit. Get one that is a standard 12-18" deep from your average big box store, they cost about $50 and you pull it right off the shelf.  I only had 10".  Cost for that special size? Three times as much and it had to be special ordered over the internet and shipped via UPS. So I held off on that purchase for awhile so that I could pay for other things...like rent, car insurance, food, gas...you know, those pesky, basic expenses.

This is a rolling pantry cart that holds my super heavy Kitchenaid mixer (which of course, wouldn't fit anyplace else), a couple other small appliances, cookbooks and mostly pantry items. Small containers from the dollar store fit on it 2 deep. I purchased some chalk labels from Cost Plus World Market to attach to the fronts of them so that they could be marked for whatever I happened to be storing in them at the moment. Nuts, grains, rice, pasta, baking soda - whatever.

A chalkboard I removed from something else got attached with magnets to the refrigerator for my 'to do' list, since I can't seem to remember diddly squat unless it's staring me in the face. In my defense, it's probably because the 'to do' list is always much too long, but I have to admit, checking things off really does give me a feeling of accomplishment.

...or at least that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Next post: The Hutch

Rental Transformation: Diary of a Dive...Part 2

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I haven't posted in a awhile on the apartment update. I've been busy doing it!

Things are coming along slowly but surely. In a small space, you really need to think the problems through thoroughly before you move forward, otherwise one ends up doing things twice. And I'm a bit anal when it comes to this sort of thing. If it doesn't come out perfectly the way I envisioned it, I'm not happy...and I won't be happy with it until I fix it!

Which brings me to the paint. Now I'm a designer - and I know better than this- which is to make design decisions based on those tiny little paint swatches that they have in the store. And DEFINITELY, don't go by what it looks like under the store's florescent lights. When picking wall paint colors for a client, I always order a large swatch from the manufacturer. (Did you know most upscale paint purveyors offer 8 x 10 inch swatches that you can order online? - for Free!) It's near impossible to get an accurate read of what the color will truly look like off those small paint chips and it will look totally different once you get it home - based on the type and amount of light your space specifically gets.

Ugh! It's freaking PINK!

But I was impatient. I wanted to get down to it and get the place painted so I could move in - instead of waiting for the larger sample to arrive in the mail. And I paid the price for it. What was supposed to be a warm medium beige came out beige with some serious Pepto Bismal pink undertones. I hated it. Knowing I wouldn't be able to tolerate it,  needless to say, I had to paint it out twice. Not necessarily a bad thing in as much as the original drywall was so badly taped and with next to no plaster, it needed all the layers it could get. But under the category of just 'git 'er done' - it was time and money spent that I wouldn't have wasted if I had cooled my jets and done it right in the first place.

Lesson Learned...
Problem fixed.

Moving on...

I had drawn up a plan and showed it to the landlord so that I could somehow fix the existing mess of a kitchen to make it functional (see Diary of a dive- Part 1) , and he, being a kind and generous soul, graciously moved the 3 cabinets for me to fit the design so I would have more storage that I could actually reach. Note the original plan had the bottom shelf going all the way across to create a place for the microwave. I ditched this idea for several reasons.

1) There was no electrical there and I'd have to hire an electrician to pull the line - or have a  r-e-a-l-l-y long extension cord from the existing socket that is to the right of the sink. The former expensive and the latter too ugly and a nuisance.
2) Code states there must be 30" minimum from the range top to anything combustible, so I'd either have to tile the shelf or sheath it in metal.
3) The microwave was too tall to fit.
4) ...and this is a biggie - the 12" wide cabinets are so narrow I couldn't actually fit any pots or pans of any size in them. So I elected to keep this area over the range open for a pot rack.

The existing 30 inch wide cabinet was moved over the range and the two 12" wide cabinets were split up and hung on either side of the opening and dropped down to the standard 18" off the countertop- where they're supposed to be. Normally a  cabinet directly over the sink would be set a little higher so that one wouldn't as easily smack their head on an open door, (and even a smurf like me has done this, and I have the divots in my head to prove it...) but as there are only going to be open shelves there, I set those at 18" off the countertop as well.

My purpose for using open shelving was merely a cost saving measure. They are a heck of a lot cheaper than actual cabinets - and I could install them all by me one-sie. (To quote Capt. Jack Sparrow)  In addition, the open shelving gives the tiny area a more open feeling of spaciousness. The doors would have really closed the space down.

Note the drywall behind the cabinets is in pretty bad shape. One of the many surprises one finds when one decides to move things - even in the smallest of remodels.

Now this was a little tricky, but the landlord key-holed around the plumbing pipes and set the cabinet in. (See Diary of a Dive - Part 1 for photo of plumbing)  Not only did it hide this super ugly situation, it added some extra storage that I didn't have before. I forgot to have him keyhole the shelves, which still need to be done, but as I can't reach it without getting on a ladder anyway, it's not particularly high on my list of priorities at the moment.

Back of cabinet keyholed around existing plumbing.

What is high on the priorities is finding a pot rack! This is way too tiny a cabinet to fit anything but a small saucepan!

A 12" wide cabinet will be even narrower on the interior. And those half shelves are just a complete waste of space. I may eventually add a roll out...but that's an expense to add later.

Cabinets re-hung and a fresh coat of paint completed - and in the right color this time, I was ready to add the shelves.

Kelly Moore 'Mission Tan' with 'Frank Lloyd White' Trim

And voila! I have a place to put my dinner plates-  which wouldn't even fit inside a 12" wide cabinet. I put up a bracer bar under the shelf to help support the entire fixture, as I was literally asking two 12" wide cabinets to carry the full weight of everything I put on the shelves as well as what was in the cabinets. I then added some hooks on the bracer bar for my coffee cups - for which I could only find one so far from the storage unit.
HORRORS! I can't live with just one!!!
Still digging...

Note the pictures to the left of the cabinet. The drywall was a huge mess here from a previously done very bad repair job. They covered the offending area quite nicely!
Like I said, I don't own this place, so there is a limit to the repair work I'm willing to do.  I still need to find a pot rack for the wall behind the range and I will need to order a white decorative arch for the top of the cabinets yet...or cultivate a very steady hand with a jig saw and do it myself. Maybe I'll add a small crown molding too. We'll see...

Now these cabinets are full overlay, which means they cover the entire face frame of the cabinet. Without hardware on them, you can't get your fingers in to open them. Quite the nuisance. I found some very reasonably priced nickel knobs at a home center. The drawers however posed a bit of a dilemma.

2 holes? Why???

Obviously, the cheapo plastic knob had to go. But even if I replaced it, I'd never be able to patch the second hole so it wasn't noticeable. These are thermofoil doors, which means the finish is essentially melted PVC pipe. Much more durable and easier to keep clean than paint, the finish is nearly indestructible....that is until someone decides to drill needless holes in them. Patching and paint would never adhere to the finish, so that was out. So once again, I just covered it up. Not a bad solutions really, I adore cup pulls anyway.  These Martha Stewart Collection polished nickel Bedford cup pulls are really quite reasonable at $4.98 each (Home Depot, online store). The exterior screw is deceiving and merely decorative, as it actually screws in from the back of the drawer head. Note though, the screws are never long enough for most framed cabinet drawer heads. I had to go buy longer screws.  Note to manufacturers: Include multiple size breakaway screws people! Hardware companies really should get with the program on this.

Polished Nickel Cup Pulls - Martha Stewart Bedford Collection

So I at least now have a place to store basic plates and glasses, although in open shelving. Not a lot of folks cup of tea, as it requires more neatness than most people want to deal with. The same applies to glass door cabinets. The trick is to not just shove everything on them in a jumble and try to occupy every square inch with 'stuff'.  If you want this option to look nice, one really needs to adapt the 'A place for everything and everything in its place' mentality. Really not all that hard when you have enough storage area to do it in. I also find that I'm not constantly battling the scenario where I have to drag a plate out from under some bowls I stacked on top of them, which is something else most people do in closed cabinets. Also a nuisance, as I tend to break a lot of dishware that way.

Left side of kitchen nearly complete - or at least functional. Now where are the rest of my coffee cups?!

 Next installment: The other side of the kitchen. I have storage for my dishware now, but no decent sized prep areas! Check in next time for how I fixed that problem.

Cheers!

Rental Transformation: Diary of a Dive...Part 1

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I'm finally in a position to rent my own place. It's been awhile, and I want to thank all the people who have kept a roof over my head for the past couple of difficult years who made it possible. But now it's time to move on...and move in.

It's still tough out there job wise, and in an effort to keep my debt load down as low as possible, I've rented an old, tired and worn studio apartment. (And in renting a studio, I also wanted to indulge my Tiny House obsession to see if I could really tolerate living in such small quarters). Although in all honesty, I have a penchant for renting run down habitats even when times are good. Never one to spend beaucoup dinero on antiseptic white apartments with one window in it, I opt for old places because they usually have more charm, windows and light. More importantly, when the owner hears I'm a designer, he usually lets me do whatever I want to it, on the premise that the place is so beat up, there isn't much I could do to it that wouldn't be an improvement.

This place is no exception.

Cracked drywall, broken mini blinds...so much to do...

Beaten and battered wood floor. It's still better than carpet in my book...

The photo is a bit deceiving, as the paint on the wall is all a grey white color, but the flash against the semi-gloss on the wood wainscot makes it appear lighter than it actually is.

I love wood floors, but there is no mistaking that these are original to the building (Circa 1940 maybe? It smacks of being a summer motel originally).

You can see the cracks in the wall I've started spackling and the floors definitely need some help (...and I much prefer that to carpet. I'm not a fan of wall to wall in a 'dirt intensive' area such as the mountains, as I've stated in a previous blog post. Carpet is near impossible to keep clean here.) The drywall is uneven, and has obviously been patched and patched again, for which no amount of spackle will repair. The floors speak for themselves. If I owned the place, I'd do it right and re-plaster the walls and at the very least, sand the floors down to bare wood...but I don't, and I'm not. So the best this place is going to get is some inexpensive cosmetic changes and some elbow grease.

And why? - oh WHY? - do contractors insist on doing this?

Cabinets had been set at 66" off the floor instead of the standard 54"...and with that, even the bottom shelf is 5" taller than I am . Seriously sir? Do I really need to get a ladder out just to have a glass of water?

I admit, this penchant for ramming a 30" high wall cabinet up to the ceiling drives me freaking nuts! And not just because I'm short. (5'1" to be exact). Cabinets are supposed to be 18" off the countertop - NOT 5 1/2 feet off the floor - for a reason. So you can actually reach them!  Not to mention all the (not optimum) storage space it robs you of on top of the cabinets if they had been set properly. In a small kitchen, every storage inch counts.

Now I'll grant you, these were obviously used 'Habitat for Humanity' store finds, and weren't originally designed for this kitchen, so I get that this is just a rental, and they made do. My point is, one sees this being done even in expensive homes and new construction.  Either the contractor assumes no one actually uses the kitchen - or only 6' tall guys cook in it - or the women are amazon's. Either way, it renders the work space relatively useless.

 And of course, I've got another issue to deal with as well...

Note the lovely plumbing pipes for the unit above that no one felt the need to install where they belonged? (Must be interesting if they need repair work done. They've got to come and ask permission to turn the water off in my apartment. Craaaaazy....)


Fortunately, I specialize in kitchen design. I can fix that!
Stay tuned to see what I do, with what I got.

But my first priority is to paint the walls and work on the floors. It's just easier to do those projects before I move my 'stuff' in.

The biggest challenge however is going to be the closet...or more accurately, lack thereof-

30" wide closet.  The ONLY closet. * heavy sigh*

Seriously? Are they kidding me??? I'm a woman. This isn't even big enough to store our shoes...

There's no place like home...there's no place like home...

Well, it was substantially more difficult than clicking my heels 3 times and chanting the above sentiment, but either way, I'm back in the Tahoe basin. Life Is Good.

After a year working in L.A. I've come to a few conclusions. 

1) Northern California and Southern California probably should be separate states. They have totally different mentalities and attitudes.

2) I may have been born in Southern Cal but my outlook is Northern Cal.

3) There is no amount of money you can earn that makes rotting in L.A. traffic worthwhile.

4) You won't be making any substantial amount of money anyway. You'll be paying through the nose for housing despite that. AND rotting in traffic.

5) The arrogance and snob factor proved too much for this mountain girl. I'd much rather drive my 'Tahoe Beater' to its death than keep up with a Kardashian...or their Bentleys.

So here I am, trying to brave the business end of the area, which is showing signs of life ever so slowly.  But such is life. We make our choices and do our best to live with them.

Now if only I can just MAKE a living. 

Where have I been all this time???

Well, for starters, moving. (Non mi piache- yes, learning a little Italian was on the 'to do' list along with the moving)  Lots to do, and never enough time to do it in.

But I would like to share with you my friend Janis's blog and what we've both been up to:

http://grannyhangers.blogspot.com/

Grannyhangers are decorative necklace holders with rings to hang your glasses on.  If you're anything like me, you have at least 6 pairs of reading glasses, (preferably one in every room)...and you still can't find any of them when you need to actually read something.  Or you pop them on top of your head (sunglasses too), bend down, where they immediately fall off and then shatter on the floor. (Non mi piache)

Well, these attractive little ditties will solve that problem.

Each one is unique, incorporating polished stones, copper, silver and/or gold, and they come in a variety of colors and styles. Click on the link above and check them out...and her blog.


We  both geared up together to do a craft fair, which wasn't 'all that', but it was a start.  I'm working on a website to go with this blog, business cards, research...and all the other things required to make my varied ventures successful. (...well, OK, I'm just hopelessly creative...or have A.D.D....or both...but that's another matter.)

Here are some photos from this last Saturday's craft fair.

 A variety of Grannyhangers

A variety of decorative cloth dolls...

...the whole enchilada...

Stay tuned for all that's happening...

Of Bug Bites and Flooring - Materials and Choices - sort of...

I'm dog sitting for a friend this week at their home.  Two lovable labs who want nothing more than to eat, go for 'walkies'...and shed. I can't say that I blame them on the latter.  It's hot during the summer in Reno. I can think of few things more miserable than having to endure the heat of the high desert with a fur coat on, so I sympathize.

Unfortunately, while I slept,  I was also apparently sharing the house with some other vicious and hungry creepy crawlies who decided my back was the local midnight buffet line.  Needless to say, I awoke to some very angry, red welts and swollen nymph nodes that I can only surmise are hives.  I'm guessing of course.  I don't have eyes in the back of my head to really get a good look - and having not experienced the joy of hives before,  this is a new experience for me. I will say this: I have never had such a severe reaction to a bug bite, which had me a bit concerned. It also got me quickly scanning the Internet for possible culprits and if they were life threatening.  After surmising that I wasn't in need of immediate medical attention, I set upon researching how best to make sure I wasn't on the menu for any subsequent entomological dinner plans.  Along with suggestions of completely stripping the bed linens and setting the wash cycle to 'nuke',  the articles also suggested clearing out any possible nesting places and doing a thorough cleaning to suck the little buggers up.

Now let me explain here. If Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, I wouldn't go as far as to say my friends do the opposite and spend every night dancing with the devil, but they certainly have dinner with him on occasion.  The dog fur and detritus on the floor could use some cleaning up, and attempts at eradicating it not only turned up a healthy dose of moths, but several radioactive sized spiders as well ( ALL were presumed guilty before proven innocent of the late night raid, and I handed out swift judgement and immediate death sentences.) My cleaning blitzkrieg even turned up a small scorpion!  YIKES!!!  I think my discomfort would have been infinitely more painful if he was the culprit, but he was executed anyway. Stay outside where you belong dammit. Anything as virulent looking as yourself enters my domain, you're just asking for slaughter.

Anyway, vacuuming up the place sounds easy enough, but Murphy's Law also reared its ugly head along with the critters, so it's been a start again, stop again scenario.  My friends own two large homes, and between the two of them, they also own several vacuum cleaners. Every single one of them - I kid you not- guaranteed to stop working within 10 minutes.   I think it's actually a selling point for them.

SALESPERSON:  Hello Madam, how may I help you today?

FRIEND: I need a new vacuum cleaner, but I really hate doing it.  Can you show me a vacuum that will crap out within 10 minutes so I have a legitimate excuse not to do it?

SALESPERSON:  Why yes Madam.  This model here, TheTotallyWorthless3000, has all sorts of swoopy features that are all guaranteed to stop working upon even the slightest salacious glance at, or the mere thought of using them.

FRIEND:  That's great. I also have two dogs who shed profusely and I can't bear to part with it. What model do you suggest?

SALESPERSON: This one madam is an excellent choice.  With absolutely no suction whatsoever, it will refuse to pick up a single hair and will merely billow it around until it unites into large, gloriously, tumbleweed-like formations...

...and so it goes.  Vacuum for 10 minutes, let the poor dear catch it's breath for an hour, vacuum for 10 minutes...let it rest again...

The amazing thing is, I don't usually buy expensive vacuum cleaners myself, and yet I still manage to find ones so capable, so studly in their suction capacity, that I've been known to vacuum up copious twigs, the charred remains of burnt offerings from the wood stove, and even large pine cone fragments. I'll bet it would easily suck up a small animal if given the opportunity.  My vacuum is so voracious, it regularly tries to inhale entire area rugs.

But anyway, the point I'm making is that this little episode got me thinking about the choices one has for flooring materials, and how those choices can either make for an easy care life style - or a constant battle with the elements such as the one I've just described.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as perfection when it comes to most building and finishing materials, and that includes flooring. Any given material will do some things very, very well, and some things not so well.  The key is in choosing materials whose  imperfections are ones you can live with. Like finding a mate, there is no such thing as finding a perfect product, just finding a product that is perfect for you.

  As I've stated earlier, I live in mountain country.  The copious amounts of crud available to be readily traipsed into the house is astounding.  Pine needles, sap, snow, mud, pollen, twigs and 'nature' of every variety abounds here.  The bottom of my hiking boots regularly attests that, yes indeed, bears really DO in fact sh*t in the woods...along with a great many other creatures.  To say that I live in a 'dirt intensive' environment would be an understatement.

Given that, I'll cop right here, I'm not a big fan of wall to wall carpet.  Too much of a crud collector for my tastes. They say an average carpet is dirtier than a city street.  Believe it son. In fact, I'd say most city streets are cleaner.  They usually get a good steam clean and scour at least once a week, which is a lot more than can be said for your carpet. (Yeah, that's the  reason you keep getting those parking tickets because you left your car parked on the street on the appointed days)

But even if you don't live in a rural area, cleaning carpets after pets and kids can be equally as trying, if not more so. (My elderly cat, before she finally went to that big kitty litter box in the sky, had an unerring radar for cleaned carpets. It was her cue to ceremoniously christen it with a particularly large hairball - or barf up her dinner.)  You've got kids and pets?... and you still want wall to wall carpet?  Masochist.

Along with the filth attractant, carpets can also be the cause of other issues, including health ones.  Carpets can off-gas irritants and/or be an open invitation to other malevolent critters, such as fleas and dust mites...as well as whatever creature decided to have its way with me the other night.  If you're hyper sensitive to these issues or have allergies, seriously consider other flooring options.

If you really must do wall to wall, this site has some great 'quickee' information on what to look for:
http://www.hometime.com/Howto/projects/flooring/floor_8.htm

 But let us explore some of your flooring options: