Hello all. We recently moved into a very sweet rental. There is wall-to-wall carpet everywhere. It's a pleasant off white medium shag. The carpeting is in the dining room as well. I have a 3 year old, and our afternoon babysitting/nannyshare situation necessitates the regular presence of an additional 3 year old and a two year old. The dining room table is an easy place for not only their eating time, but also social snacks, tea, coloring, and hangouts. To protect the carpet, I put a cheap dark area rug below the table. Although this and regular vacuuming keep things looking clean, it's really hard to manange the kids' use of the chairs there. The smushiness of the rugs gives very little stability to the relatively lightweight chairs and they tip over when empty or if a coat is on the back of them. When someone is in the chairs, moving them is difficult as the feet sort of get swallowed up by all of the cushiness. I can imagine heavier chairs could help, but will still be hard to move. I could imagine splat mats or office chair mats could help with the other problems, but the chairs would still be hard to move. Anyone have any ideas? Can I just buy a slab of concrete to put under the table (just kidding). Help!
What about those mats that you buy at office supply stores to protect carpets from rolling office chairs? They're a bit expensive, but designed to be hard enough the wheels work on them even over carpet.
The dark area rug is probably going to impart its color onto the off white carpeting. I would feed the children in the kitchen.
The only thing I can think of would be to buy a sheet of linoleum to fit the room, or under the table area and tape it down to the carpet.
Not your fault, but why on earth would anyone put white carpet in a rental (and in the dining room)? We also have carpet in our dining room and I hate it. Luckily, we have an eat-in kitchen so we rarely use our dining room for eating.
What about that sticky plastic they use to cover carpet when doing renovations? Not good looking but practical! If its cheap enough, you jut take it up when having company and put some back down for everyday. Who puts a carpet in dining room of a rental?
Have you considered talking to your landlord about your situation? I help my mother manage her rental houses and if a tenant came to us with this issue, we'd help with a solution. Your landlord doesn't want to deal with replacing a filthy carpet when you move out. If you plan to live there for a while, perhaps you could find out the cost to have the carpet removed in the dining room and replaced with vinyl flooring. It could probably be done for a few hundred dollars (maybe less) and maybe you could offer to split the cost with your landlord. Could be better than ruining the carpet and having your landlord deduct the cost from your security deposit when you move out. They might be happy to have the more practical new vinyl floors and it would make life a lot easier on you while you live there. Good luck!
White shag carpet + children = extra expense to replace aforementioned white shag carpet when you move out
They make rug protectors. We got ours at Lowes home improvement. If anything, use an indoor/outdoor waterproof rug, because spills would just soak through a regular rug, right into the white shag.
Any possibility you can pull up the rug in the dining room and store it in the garage? Then you could put down an inexpensive area rug and not worry about the chairs tipping.
Why would anyone put carpet in the dining room? What about one of those bamboo area rugs?
Can you put some type of coaster or glider under the legs so that they will slide easier? We got some for oir ottomans so they would move around easier and I am pretty sur ethey make them small enough for chair legs. I am sure Target or Home Depot would have them. Then try a low pile rug or jute rug so they can move easier.
You could buy chairs with wheels so they can manuever easier and I would also buy the mats as well. Then, you could put newspaper down over the mats easy clean up
