Deferring Our Carpet Purchase to Save Money

As I recently showed on our big ticket list, the next item my wife and I are planning on purchasing was new carpet for the baby's room. This upcoming purchase has been of great debate between the two of us.

When we first made an offer on the house, my wife and I agreed to put in the offer, but her agreement (between the 2 of us) was contingent that we replace the carpet in this bedroom. The carpet throughout the rest of the house is of neutral color, the carpet in this bedroom is an unattractive pink color. While the condition of the carpet is good, my wife really does not like the carpet color.

I have been more reluctant about replacing the carpet thinking we can overlook it, but its been very important to my wife so its been high on our big ticket list. We started pricing carpet and had a estimated cost of $659.20-$720.40 depending on the measurements they company takes and the final carpet selection.

However, its still a lot of money for flooring. My wife mentioned that maybe we could just cover the floor with a large piece of loose carpet or even a rug to neutralize the floor color. Initially I dismissed it thinking it would only be a quick fix - my wife would quickly be back on getting the floor addressed permanently.

However, my wife continued to nudge this idea and agreed that we would be able to defer the carpet replacement for at least a couple years (until we are ready to replace all the carpet). Once I heard this I encouraged her to find a rug and we would try it out. Once we actually replaced the carpet, the rug would be moved to one of our other rooms with hardwoods.

My wife found a neutral color rug for $202.29 (after-tax). We laid it out and it takes the pink color out of the floor - there is about a 2 foot border around the rug of the carpet, but it doesn't overshadow the room. We are both very happy with the results. My wife's concern about the color of the carpet has been neutralized and Im very happy that we can reduce the expense to a much smaller amount - a win-win for both of us. We have effectively deferred $500 of spending for at least 2-4 years.

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Comments (3)

You've got an amazing wife. My wife is frugal like that too, but it sounds like you agreed to replace the carpet, and then backed out on your end of the deal. Maybe I'm misinterpreting but 500 dollars is not enough to buy a commitment I made to my wife.

Posted by John | April 27, 2009 3:57 PM

I was in a similar situation.
I was looking at buying carpet to go over the old beaten up floorboards in the master bedroom. I ended up just getting a can of paver paint for ~US$20 and painting that on.
Did the job for basically no cost.

Posted by John C | April 27, 2009 9:33 PM

Brave man to retract on your agreement...
Remember Happy Wife = Happy Life

Posted by ZooMNFinancial | April 30, 2009 3:42 PM