Office Chairs and Free Rugs – More Complicated Than It Sounds

My parents wanted to do my dad’s office on a shoestring budget (though they did put a little money into 3 days of Irish labor), so they happily took some free stuff. I picked an office chair out of the trash at work and my aunt happened to have a good Oriental rug in her attic.  The problem is the edge of the rug is in just about the worst place possible for the chair.

I had pictured the rug being just a little bit smaller and thought that it was going to be turned around the other way and kept clear of the desk. Instead it almost fills the floor space in the middle of the room. (Yes, that means that they did move the bed out of the center of the room.)

So we decided to butt a small, rug up against the big one and then put a clear plastic chair mat over this area so the chair could roll around and not damage anything. My dad ordered a chair mat, then when I was visiting we found a cheap rug that was the right size and ordered that. He seemed happy. But then he told me that rugs weren’t quite the right sizes to cover the whole space under the mat.

Anyways, he dwelt on this problem and proceeded to work himself up into a fit. He said that he’ll just let the mat hang off the rugs and void the warranty, or that he could make it work by never stepping on the edges that hang off. He said he’ll push the big rug as close to the cabinets as he can get it, which would buy him all of 2 extra inches. He said he’d use remnants of blue wall-to-wall carpeting underneath… even when apparently he also apparently has remnants of every other carpet they ever had installed, some of which are better colors for the room. And as he shouted about the stress it was giving him to design a room around a free rug that is not suitable for an office, he said that he’ll just leave the room vacant and use my sister’s room, where a wooden chair and carpet scrap are less of a problem than the insurmountable dilemma of putting a chair mat over area rugs.

So, disaster. Irredeemable, right? Not so much! The mat and rug came, he likes them, and his blood pressure is back to normal.

I think maybe the chair mat should go all the way up against the cabinets, and if the wants full mobility in the chair maybe they do need to find little plugs of carpeting to cover those gaps. It would look a bit rigged but who’s paying attention? Now how does one find a piece of carpet that would blend in and disappear here? I suggested going to a junk yard and getting a black floor mat from an old car. My mom said I’m crazy. I think my dad liked this plan for exactly that reason.

But anyways, this room is starting to look like a room now! Soon it might be done enough for me to show it to you!