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Annie Elliott Design, Washington DC

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Design House update: More about rugs, flooring

Annie Elliott | February 18, 2009

One might say that ripping a hole in the knee of one’s tights during one’s very first meeting of the day could be a bad omen.

I beat the odds, though, and had a very productive day yesterday. Yes, the Odegard rug is committed, but I still have to figure out what goes UNDER it.

I’d envisioned a rich dark wood herringbone floor, but the nice man at Foundation flooring (no website, Foundation?) said it was one of the most expensive, labor-intensive materials I could buy. “You have excellent taste, though,” he said.

That didn’t make me feel better.

I thought about cork, but it didn’t feel right. Then I wandered into Patterson, Flynn & Martin. The showroom manager there – quite “urban elegant” himself, I might add – could not have been lovelier.

We went through racks and racks of rug samples with an eye toward doing a wall-to-wall installation and laying the Odegard rug on top of it. (He was extremely gracious about the fact that I’m not using one of HIS area rugs, which also are drop-dead gorgeous.)

Here were the finalists, with the other rug:


The room is about 18-1/2′ x 18′, and the center rug will be 9 x 12.’ So there’s still quite a bit of floor to cover. I think this one’s too dark, but I’m not quite ready to eliminate it:

This one’s too cold. It looks perfect in the picture, but you’ll just have to take my word for it:

This is a top contender:

As is this one:

So we have choices. And as a special bonus, the showroom manager said he’d call this the “bossy color display.” :)


p.s. – met with the Design House’s head honcha yesterday about my preliminary submissions, and I seem to be on the right track. Whew.

Category: Rugs

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