This beauty will be the door to our laundry/pantry. It served as the backdrop for my sister’s recent wedding and the happy couple was kind enough to let us bring it home! #SAFaye

After figuring out the cottonwood floor plan (see “Floors: Plan C“), we decided that it would be a good idea, and economical, too, to have something a little more…well…replaceable in the laundry room/pantry. Because that room is where not only our washer/dryer will live, but also our refrigerator and dry goods, we need something that can handle water, and be easy to replace if necessary.

So, I returned to my favorite new retail experience: the ReStore, and their tall-as-me piles of Flor carpet squares.

The 20-inch squares are just $1.50 each (less than 50 cents per square foot)—a great deal! And, as you can see, the piles offer an amazing selection…completely at random. Early on in my digging I decided that my best bet was to pull every mid-tone, dark gray, and black pattered tile I could find. It soon became obvious that I wasn’t going to end up with enough of any one pattern to do the whole room in a single motif. So, I just kept pulling tiles in the same color scheme—some with thin stripes of color, some black and white, some gray. After almost an hour of looking at every single square, working my way one-by-one through five of the huge stacks, I had 50 tiles on my cart.

By the way, I wish I’d know I could have skipped my morning workout! I started at the top of each pile, looking at about ten tiles at a time, and then lifting those ten (heavy!) off the pile and starting a new pile in the aisle beside me. At the bottom of each pile (probably 100+ tiles), I had to move all the ones I had stacked in the aisle back into place. That’s what I call functional fitness!

Ok…back to the design part of this post. Check out the variety of pattern! FUN!

I can hear you now: What is she thinking? That will look like a circus! Trust me, it will be awesome. And because the main color is the ultimate neutral, the pattern variety will not be overwhelming. Scroll down to make sure I’m right.

After delivering my tile treasures to the farm, Ben and I decided to go ahead and lay the Flor floor. Even though the drywall is still in progress and I know the squares will immediately be covered in dust and construction debris, we are moving appliances into the room in the next few days and need the floor in place.

Finally, a construction project where I can help!

Note: you can see there are cabinets hung somewhat randomly on the wall. These are the original kitchen cabinets. We need them for storage, but they were in the way when sitting on the floor. So Ben just screwed them to the wall to get them out of the way. They won’t be there forever. But for now, they are providing a somewhat dust-free place to stash stuff.

You can see the drywall-dusty footprints on the squares already. But, they are industrial strength and clean up well. Also, we have extras (I got a little carried away with my purchase) and can easily replace any that get trashed. How fab is that?!?!