Oscar Bravo Home

If you've been following along, you know that we have been in the restoration phase in our home due to water damage. So far our amazing restoration company, Mission Restoration has done a fantastic job in taking care of us and our home. As of now Mission Restoration has completely dried the water damage, installed a new water heater, ripped out damaged carpet and installed and painted new drywall to damaged areas. We are almost done getting our home back to normal! All that is left is to replace the old carpet with new carpet and put back the baseboards. SO EXCITED!

Let me just start by saying that this isn't  necessarily going to be a post about "how to choose the right carpet" or a "10 things you need to know before buying carpet" post. I actually don't know much about buying carpet and have no experience replacing flooring with anything else but wood or tile. Carpet has a bad wrap, yo! But I actually don't mind wall to wall carpeting upstairs and in bedrooms especially because it helps muffle sounds which is very important when you live in a small home with a wife that loves gangster rap, two gamer kids and an annoying ass dog that barks at everything that passes by.  ANYWAYZ, like I was saying, even though this isn't going to be one of those informative posts it's still fun to share the process with you and look at the pretty samples together, am I right? A bit shallow, yes -but whatever.

I did take some time to do a little online research on what makes a good quality carpet but nothing groundbreaking, really. A lot of the information I read about carpet I already learned in my college textiles class but I will share it with you cuz I guess not everyone takes textile classes in college, LOL.

I know I said this wasn't an informative post, but I'll just quickly share the little I know about carpet.

Oscar's Carpet Facts and Tips: (take them with a grain of salt)

So basically, most carpet is made out of nylon, polyester or wool. There's a couple more options out there but those three are the most popular.

WOOL:

Wool is probably the most durable carpet out there as far as resilience. In other words, wool carpet retains it's "fluffiness" for many many years compared to nylon or polyester. The average life span of wool carpet is about 25 years! Wool also naturally resists oils and dirt which is great. The cons of wool carpet is #1 it's expensive. Also, even though wool carpet resists basic dirt and oils, it IS prone to mold and mildew, and prone to soaking up liquids. In other words, NO.  Even if it lasts you over 25 years, that wool carpet's gonna be dirty AF.

NYLON:

Nylon is a synthetic fiber which means its very durable. Between nylon and Polyester, Nylon is usually more resilient and will retain it's texture better than polyester. The drawbacks of nylon is that it's not naturally stain resistant BUT nylon carpet is usually treated with some anti-stain solution so you're probably good. Nylon can also discolor in the sun and I really don't know if they make sunscreen for carpets.

POLYESTER:

So there are my tips! Honestly these tips helped a little but really it seems like you can't go wrong with any carpet except wool, lol. All the carpets that we looked at had amazing 25 year and lifetime warranty on their texture retention, stain resistance and pet stain resistance (a big deal for our family) so I was pretty confident in having style be my guide :) My advice is to take into consideration the warranty that each carpet company and installation company has.


OK, let's talk style!

I've been envisioning a herringbone pattern carpet ever since I can remember so as soon as I found out we were going to need to change our carpet, I already had that in mind. Sean from Mission Restoration recommended we check out Rayo Wholesale Carpet in Santee as they have a huge selection so that's what we did and wow, Sean was right. It was actually a bit overwhelming at first, and I didn't really know where to start. So I did what I do best...just jump right in and start looking! My wife and I both wanted a pattern on the carpet and I wanted herringbone so we just started going through the store displays pulling out samples that we liked. We ended up with about 10 samples, then narrowed it down to about 4. Rayo Wholesale allowed us to borrow the samples and take them home so we could get a better idea as to how the carpet would look in our house. Out of the ones we took home, these 3 are the final contenders:




From left to right, the first one is a true herringbone style which I love. The second one kind of looks like it's woven and almost resembles wool carpeting and I really dig it's texture. The third one is a contemporary take on herringbone which is my wife's favorite out of the three. All three come in great, neutral color choices which is important to me because if we are going to pick a patterned carpet, it has to be neutral and have minimal contrast so it won't look too busy.

"Distinguished" by Masland. They have so many beautiful styles.

Love this contemporary take on herringbone by Shaw Floors called "Urban Design"

Another beautiful choice by Shaw Floors called "Tranquil Waters". What's not so beautiful..? My sneakers.

Out of the three I am really leaning towards "Distinguished"  by Masland and my wife is leaning towards "Urban Design" by Shaw Floors. Or do we go "safe' and choose tranquil waters? Because for some reason I'm a little nervous going with such a graphic pattern like herringbone in a whole second floor! I know that's what I've been wanting but since this is such a big commitment, it's making me nervous! What if the herringbone is too overwhelming?!

Let me know in the comments what you guys think we should go with. I'd love to hear your imput! I will let you know what we end up choosing soon! Also, like I promised, I will be working on my post on homeowners insurance tips so that will be up on the blog as well.

Take care!
Oscar

If you've been following my stories on Instagram then you probably remember that last month we had a leak upstairs which lead to our home being turned upside down. It was a fiasco for what I thought was just a simple leak. Let me either remind you or let you know what went down last month.

We have our water heater upstairs in the hallway inside a water heater closet. I know you're probably thinking why anyone would put a water heater upstairs and yeah I agree - it's a really dumb place to put one because water heaters leak! But, that's how all the homes in my neighborhood were built and I didn't really think anything of it when we first bought our home. Anyway, the water heater leaked and ended up damaging the carpet, some walls, the flooring upstairs and the ceiling downstairs. There were no gushes of water or anything...it was just a small leak that I think happened throughout the morning hours but it was enough water to really saturate the carpet upstairs and the wood in between the top and bottom floors.