What is the first thing you - or anyone else sees when they come through the door?
The entry is not the most glamorous room in a home - it usually gets no billing at all unless we are talking "mudroom" organization. We don't have a mudroom (Oh, to dream!). The mud/dirt/leaves etc. all come in through the front door of our home.
Prior to this Fall, all of the above landed on an ill-fitting rug over white tile (what crazy person purposely puts white tile in front of an exterior door???). It looked filthy all the time - summer it was dirt and grime. Fall it was dirt, grime and leaves. But, oh the winter. That was the worst. Wet, sloppy, salty boots entered and had no place to go.
The problem that vexed me, was the size and shape of the space. When the door was opened, you had only one choice - go forward. The space is rectangular. Much larger than a 4x6' rug and slightly smaller than an 5x8' rug. These are standard sizes. I could find plenty of rugs I loved at a decent cost but none of them fit! A small rug only accommodated EITHER the footsteps into the room from outside OR a place to put the wet boots. Not both. A large rug ran up the walls. (Did I mention the room ends in a diagonal cut?) I spent way to much time searching online for a perfect sized rug - they didn't exist. Custom made rugs are out of the question- too expensive. I had tried the "boot trays", but they were ugly, messy and kept getting walked all over and bumped around. And even with those, the surrounding floor was still always sloppy.
Finally, the lightning bolt struck and I had the answer. It's so easy - you have to try this for problem floor spaces.
I bought the rug I really wanted in the "too big" 5x7' size from Target. Dark brown to hide dirt, easy to vacuum, durable, relatively inexpensive compared to everything else. I turned it over and drew out my perfect sized and shaped rug on the back with a permanent marker. Then I brought it to a local binding company. They charge a small fee, normally, for each cut (in my case only two - one to make it shorter and one to make it narrower) and another fee for each liner foot of binding. They matched the existing two sides perfectly. In one week, I had a custom made rug for a fraction of the cost of any other.
In my area, I found Bob's Binding & Serging in Golden Valley (http://www.bobsbinding.com/) but this is a common business across the country. (Who knew?) As of this Fall they charged $10 to cut off the excess and $1.90 per liner foot of binding. Since my project was small, I think they waived the cut cost and I paid only around $75 for the whole process. For around $200, I had a new custom-made rug for the entryway of our home. Now you can come in the door, use the closet and set your boots anywhere you want and it will still be dry and look clean. Even when it's not. ;-)
