8. Completely floored!

With the main wall completed to my satisfaction, I set my sights a little lower. The floor of the closet is covered in typical wall-to-wall berber carpeting. And it's BEIGE. It doesn't exactly scream enchantment.

My quest for realism falls way short of dumping a load of mossy dirt and decaying leaves on the floor of the closet. What can I do that will be comfy and cozy for the grandkids, and still extend some sense of fantasy and wonder of the fairy forest, I ask myself. I decide to pursue a green meadow look, so off I go to Google to do some window shopping. 

It didn't take long to find a selection of options, ranging from exorbitantly expensive to downright dirt cheap. Looking at that range as a sliding scale I was definitely leaning towards the latter end. And I found just what I was looking for too! But first, let's take a look at some of the options I ultimately discarded.

It's pretty easy to find artificial turf of various textures, and colours, but I was searching for something a bit more whimsical than that. And definitely comfier. I decided carpeting of some sort would be the way to go, and I wanted it to cover the entire 4' X 8' space. And since the curtain fell short about an inch and a half above the baseboards, I needed to able to extend the floor covering up the wall a few inches along the curtain wall.

Oh, the beautiful, lush carpets I found! 

Some of the high end carpets were absolutely dreamy, but a more suitable match to a hand-painted masterpiece by an accomplished artist rather than a $20 taped-on polyester wall tapestry. This one caught my eye on Etsy. Just look at the texture and different tones in that baby!

Priced from $142-$265, it was a bit pricey for my budget. And on closer inspection, the listing by MyCraftMaster is actually a rug hooking kit. I would have to make the carpet myself. Moving right along....

Also on Etsy from FangCraftsStudio, I found similar ones that were already hand-crafted: lush wool forest floors that would be perfect for creating the illusion of a fairy glade. And they can create custom sizes to your specifications!

Taking a closer look, prices start at $600 for a 3.3' square mat and go as high as $2600+. Don't get me wrong. I don't begrudge these craftspeople those prices. A tremendous amount of work go into a creation like this, and I know all too well how potential customers can be turned off by the prices asked for hand-crafted work. Art takes a great deal of time, effort and creativity, not to mention the cost of materials. But for my meagre purposes, it was time to put some filters on my search engine.

I found a few more similar, machine made but reasonably priced options, with varying textures and colours, but couldn't find anything to completely fill the space. Like this moss bath mat from Amazon, priced at $39.99 for the 20"X30" size. Not even close to being big enough.

Still searching for a forest floor that was dirt cheap, I discovered some bright green fur rugs, that provided the whimsy I was looking for, as well as the comfort. Not particularly well-made for high traffic use, they were certainly a good choice for occasional visits from little people. And the price was right.

Available in a variety sizes, there were none with the dimensions I needed. First, I opted for a 4' wide carpet that fell short in length. I thought I might make up the difference with a scatter mat with a 3D image of stones (yes, they exist!), thus forming a kind of pathway. I agonized over that for a while, researching options on Google. But ultimately,  I went for simplicity and ordered another green fur rug, this time using the 8' length, as a guide. I would worry about the excess width later!

Testing it out on the closet floor, I knew it was the perfect option when the eldest granddaughter came to visit, threw herself down on the fluffy surface and declared she wanted to have an overnight adventure with her younger cousin, sleeping in the closet. Perfect.

With the various aches and pains that come with being a senior, anchoring the carpet was a bit of a challenge for inflexible old me. I decided to use the Alien double-sided gel tape to secure the edges to the berber carpeting, and up the wall to meet the wall tapestry. The excess width is just getting folded under and secured; it's not as if a forest floor has to be level, right?

So far, the fluffy fur rug appears to work beautifully, and will be easily removeable when the time comes. But of course, it hasn't yet been tested by rambunctious youngsters yet, so I guess we will see once the quest for the fairy forest is complete.