I’m a researcher at heart; I went to nearly every store in the area comparing rug prices and selection. I hit Home Depot, Target, Kohls, Macy’s, JCPenney, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, and a host of online shops including buyrugsdirect.com, homedecorators.com, and ebay. I put about 20 rugs on my “watch list” for ebay so that I could track what their ending prices were; this gave me a good idea as to what price I’d have to pay by the end of an auction, and I will probably buy one or more off of ebay in the near-ish future.

But all of my local shopping paid off – thanks to a tip from a friend, who mentioned that a Thomasville Furniture store near us was going out of business and had advertised a sale on rugs. And rugs, indeed! Two stores in the area were closed down, and all of the merchandise was brought to this location where a team of “liquidation experts” were brought in to get rid of everything as fast as possible. They had massive piles of traditional and contemporary rugs piled high with great markdowns – 65% off. But little old me, on a teensy budget, still felt way out of my league. The room-sized rugs were original $2-$3k… even at 65% off, that’s a hefty wad of cash to part with.

Still, I had to look – for the sake of research. ;) 3 immigrant workers flipped rug after rug after rug while I oohed and aahed (and inwardly cringed at some ugly ones). I felt a little strange having people flip rugs for me, and stranger still to have an older Russian gentleman standing next to me trying to gauge my reactions. When ones came up I liked, I told him – he took out his calculator and gave me his “lowest price”, a further reduction off the clearance prices. Verdict? Still too expensive.
Luckily, the friendly salesman the rugs took pity on me, or realized I was about to leave without having bought anything. He showed me a few in the stack that he could further reduce to a number I was comfortable with. I ended up walking out with a gorgeous 11×8 Turkish wool rug for about 1/5 it’s original cost. It’s beautiful, and quite possibly the nicest piece of home decor we own. Certainly the nicest piece we’ve purchased ourselves!

The colors are somewhat muted, with nice tans, creams, and golds – plus mossy green and a  dark reddish-orange. It looks amazing next to the dark hardwoods.

The dogs are in love…… it’s given them a place to run in tight, endless circles without slipping and sliding into something. I couldn’t even get a photo without them in it, try as I might.

We’re still debating what room it’s going to live in, but for now it’s resting in the foyer where we can admire it’s beauty for the 3 days that it will remain clean.