In which we start to shop for the apartment

Had a great shopping excursion yesterday after washing out at the auction preview....Lots of junk out there!!  We went to our favorite store, Mardens, to see what bargains could be found.  They had a lot of flat carpeting remnants that would work well in two of the bedrooms.  The remnants are nice quality and come in around 45 cents a square foot. not too bad.  There was a lovely white wool berber carpet, but it was only 10 x 8', not useable for us.

We actually have the carpet below in red in our bedroom and have had it there for about 10 years.  The blue below was the same carpet that the Edge restaurant in Lincolnville used.  

This beige one reminds me of Stark carpeting that you see in all the mags.  

Both Greg and I really liked this steel colored carpeting for the whole downstairs common area, save for the kitchen and the mud room.  It would certainly not show much dirt for awhile!!

This is a beautiful stained maple flooring that we thought would look awesome in the mudroom with the carpeting above, but when we got it out in natural light, the two colors didn't go well together.  Lesson here is check all products out from under the showroom lights!

You may think we are nuts, but we did find tiles for the first floor bathroom.  The white tile has copper threads running through it and will be used just in the shower.  The irridescent tile band has the some of the same brownish copper tones as does the slate tile.  It looks very pleasing together and the slate floor tiles have GREAT colors...kind of Monet water lilly colors that do not fight the white of the shower tiles.  We were a bit taken aback by the increase in price of the slate tiles.  $1.48 a square foot rather than $1.00 a square foot in 2010.  We love slate tile floors, the price is right and the look is great.  Grouting is a bitch, but sealing the tiles first make the grout clean up so much easier!  

 I have to go to yet another auction preview today, so we will hit Lowes and HD again down in Rockland for toilets and sinks.

There is an auction in few weeks that has these dining room chairs and matching table.  I don't think we'll be able to afford them, but I love these for the apartment.